page_title: Bodil Kaalund
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Bodil Kaalund / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Lemvig Kirke, altertavle med maleri af Bodil Kaalund English: Church of Lemvig, Denmark
context_page_description: Bodil Marie Kaalund-Jørgensen was an award-winning Danish painter, textile artist and writer, who is remembered above all for her artwork in Danish churches and for her Bible illustrations. She was also a major contributor to the recognition of Greenland's cultural heritage, thanks in part to her Grønlands Kunst, published in English in 1983 as The Art of Greenland.
context_section_description: Born in Silkeborg on 8 November 1930, Bodil Marie Kaalund was the daughter of the painter Martin Kaalund-Jørgensen (1889–1952) and Hilda Jenny Rasmussen (1896–1984), a teacher. It was thanks to her father that she became interested in painting from an early age. Her mother, who never worked professionally, became her teacher when she and her elder sister spent their long summers in their Røsnæs summerhouse. In 1943, the family moved to Lyngby where she lived for the rest of her life.
  Kaalund attended the state school in Lyngby. In her early teens, she became interested in religious art. This was reinforced in 1946 when she discovered the work of Edvard Munch while on holiday in Norway. When she was just 18, she exhibited two landscape paintings at Den Frie Udstilling's autumn exhibition.
  After matriculating from high school, she studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Kræsten Iversen, Holger J. Jensen and Elof Risebye, graduating in 1954. In 1950, Kaalund married the painter Nikolaj Nielsen. They had one child together, Magnus, but the marriage was dissolved in 1976.
caption: Bodil Kaalung: Altar in Lemvig Church
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