Background
She was born in Ås, a daughter of educator and physicist Gabriel Gabrielsen Holtsmark (1867–1954) and his wife Margrete Weisse (1871–1933). She was a maternal granddaughter of philologist Johan Peter Weisse, and a paternal granddaughter of agriculturalist and politician Bent Holtsmark.
Education
Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
Career
She attended the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry from 1924 to 1927 and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1927 to 1930. Some of her paintings were Expressionist. She also became a Communist, and stayed several times in France where she also studied under Georg Jacobsen in 1936.
She had her first exhibit at Kunstnerforbundet in 1935, and had major exhibits in Copenhagen in 1935 and Lund, Sweden in 1937.
The National Gallery does own twelve of her landscape paintings. In 1959 she was one of the winners of a contest to be displayed in the Parliament of Norway.
Her work Solens gang was woven by Else Halling between 1959 and 1965, and was displayed in the Central Hall. She retired in 1970 because of an eye condition.
She died in March 1998 in Åson