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Angelic Messages

by Dorthe Fogh

Christmas is time for letters. The Christmas exhibition at Post & Tele Museums presents some of the most beautiful: Viktor’s letters.


Viktor’s name was actually Walter Glück and he was from the US. In the early 1960’s he settled in a canal barge in Amsterdam. Here he lived his life under modest conditions without running water or electricity and with the bottom of the barge covered with a soft layer of straw. Viktor was a journalist and photographer. In Amsterdam he developed as an artist and here he met in 1968 the Danish woman to whom he later sent his loving and humorous messages.

Viktor’s letters are works of art. He used old, yellowing paper bags as envelopes and decorated them in many different ways. He cut beautiful pictures out of colourful magazines. Especially photos of people and ships found favour in his eyes, but also well-known works or art caught his attention, e.g. the famous portraits of the renaissance. Sometimes he drew his own pictures and added others that fitted into the coherence so that the envelopes appeared as collages, and stamps were pasted on to them in a way emphasizing the composition and colours of the collages.

It was not only the envelopes that were extraordinary. Also the contents were exceptional: a bird’s feather, some straws from the boat, rhymes, or printed apothegms.

Until his death in 1986, Viktor frequently sent his letters to Copenhagen where the postmen must have enjoyed delivering the unusual envelopes although sometimes it must have been difficult only to pay attention to the name and address of the recipient. Viktor’s letters are like an encouragement to send personal letters in beautifully decorated wrappings.

It is obvious to see Viktor’s art in continuation of the spontaneous-abstract art which in Denmark we know so well from Asger Jorn and the Cobra Group. They thought that all people possess artistic skills that they ought to display.

A book of Viktor’s letters is available in the Museum Shop. Price: DKK 50.



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