Franciska Clausen

Franciska Clausen (7 January 1899 – 5 March 1986) was a Danish painter.

Clausen studied at the Die Grossherzogliche sächsische Hochschule für bildende Kunst in Weimar, Germany (1916–17), at the Women’s Academy in Munich (1918–19), at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, in Copenhagen, Denmark (1920-21), and under Hans Hofmann at the Hofmann Schule Fur Moderne Kunst in Munich (1921-22). She subsequently sought out private lessons from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Sept. - Dec. 1922, from Alexander Archipenko in Berlin in 1923, and under Fernand Léger in Paris (1924-25). She was inspired by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Constructionist collages. From 1924 to 1928 in Paris, cubism can be seen in her paintings with a base in Legers ‘machine style art’. Between 1924 and 1928 Clausen worked in Paris. In the paintings from this period such as, Konstruktiv modellstudie, (1925), Contre-Composition (1928), and Komposition, (1927), was under the influence of Leger’s machine style and is clearly visible. In 1933 she taught at the Tegne- og Kunstindustriskole for Kvinder (Drawing and applied arts school for women) in Copenhagen, Denmark. Through her career Clausen passed through most of the stages in the development of modern art, and her paintings show elements of Neue Sachlichkeit, Constructivism, Cubism, Neo-plasticism, Surrealism and Purism in her paintings, though her greatest influence was Léger.