Background
Alfredo Andersen was born on November 3, 1860 in Kristiansand, Norway. He was the only son among the five children of Tobias Andersen and Hanna Carina Andersen.
decorator painter sculptor teacher set designer
Alfredo Andersen was born on November 3, 1860 in Kristiansand, Norway. He was the only son among the five children of Tobias Andersen and Hanna Carina Andersen.
Andersen's artistic training took place in Europe, in private workshops in Norway and Denmark, and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He was a student of prominent artists and decorators of his time, such as Wilhelm Krogh and Carl A. Andersen.
Between the 1880s and 1890s, Andersen worked as a professional artist in Norway and Denmark, performing as a painter (with individual exhibitions in Oslo and Copenhagen), teacher, set designer and journalist.
In 1889 Andersen went to Paris to make the journalistic coverage of the Official Hall of Fine Arts. After a long period of travels through Europe and America, Andersen landed in Paraná in 1892, establishing residence in Paranaguá. He lived there for about ten years, making his living from custom portraits and scenic decorations for houses.
At the age of 42, Andersen moved to Curitiba. In the capital of Paraná, he opened an atelier at Rua General Deodoro (now Rua Marechal Deodoro). In the years in which he held his studio, Andersen resumed his professional activities as close as possible to what he did in Europe, holding individual exhibitions, attending collective shows and resuming his role as a teacher of painting.
In the decade of 1910, Andersen began to teach drawing in formal education institutions of the city, such as the German School, Colégio Paranaense and the School of Fine Arts and Industries. In addition, he tightened his ties with the State Government, executing the first project for the coat of arms of the State of Paraná. In 1915, Andersen moved his atelier-school to the building where today is the Alfredo Andersen Museum.
Later Andersen's work as a painter, educator and cultural agent was extremely rich, and his professional reputation solidified, demonstrating how the bourgeois class that settled in Curitiba had a taste rooted in the European artistic traditions of the nineteenth century.
In 1927, Andersen returned to Norway to visit family and friends and reunited with his former teacher Wilhelm Krogh. There he received an invitation from the Norwegian government to stay and direct the Oslo School of Fine Arts, but Andersen declined it and returned to Brazil.
Andersen died on August 9, 1935 in Curitiba, Brazil.
In Paranaguá Andersen met Anna de Oliveira, a young woman twenty-five years younger, a descendant of the Carijó Indians. The couple had four children. Their forth daughter was born in 1914.