Updated November 2026 · ranked by our popularity score (searches, visits and orders for each work) · 7 works by Inge Ellegaard in our catalogue
In short
Diana at the Cemetery I (1990) is the Inge Ellegaard painting that draws the most eyes; the original belongs to the Statens Museum For Kunst, Copenhagen. After it, the eye goes to The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1982) and Milkyway (1984). Among the 7 works of Inge Ellegaard in our catalog, these 7 are the most famous, each a unique original presented with its year, its museum and the reason it endures.
A woman kneels in profile, her body a sharp silhouette against a heavy, textured landscape. She faces upward, seeking light from a pale sky that hangs above a terrain of dark, mound-like shapes. These mounds, suggesting graves or burial mounds, rise from the earth in deep blues and teals. A shovel rests nearby, a silent tool in a place of stillness. The ground is thick with impasto, where the paint…
The museum that holds the most of the paintings on this page.
| Museum | City | Works by Inge Ellegaard | Paintings from this list |
|---|---|---|---|
 Statens Museum For Kunst |
Copenhagen | 7 | Diana at the Cemetery I, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes, Milkyway |
A long career of 17 years, 1982 to 1998: Inge Ellegaard's most famous originals, shown year by year.
Pick a year to see its originals.
A woman kneels in profile, her body a sharp silhouette against a heavy, textured landscape. She faces upward, seeking light from a pale sky that hangs above a terrain of dark, mound-like shapes. These mounds, suggesting graves or burial mounds, rise from the earth in deep blues and teals. A shovel rests nearby, a silent tool in a place of stillness. The ground is thick with impasto, where the paint…
More from 1990
Diana at the Cemetery I (1990), Statens Museum For Kunst, Copenhagen. The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1982) and Milkyway (1984) come next.
37 years old: Diana at the Cemetery I dates from 1990, and Inge Ellegaard was born in 1953.
Our catalog holds 7 works by Inge Ellegaard, dated from 1982 to 1998.
Mostly in Statens Museum For Kunst (Copenhagen). The museum table above lists them all.
In 1990: 3 of the 7 works on this page were made then, Diana at the Cemetery I among them.
On this page, the earliest is The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes (1982) and the latest 5 Roses on a Chequered Background (1998).
Diana at the Cemetery I, The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes and Milkyway: the Statens Museum For Kunst, Copenhagen holds 7 of the works on this page.
Fåborg, 1953. The arrival of Inge Ellegaard marks the beginning of a life that would eventually fracture the boundaries of Danish painting. By the 1980s, she emerges as a central figure in the De Unge Vilde movement, a period defined by an explosive, raw energy that sought to revive the power of the brushstroke. Her early work carries this weight, characterized by a certain wildness in color and composition.
Yet, beneath the surface of this initial ferocity, a different logic begins to take hold. The chaos does not remain chaotic. Instead, it settles into a tension between the expressive and the minimalist, the textural and the stringent. She develops a method where motifs exist as detached symbols, floating within the frame without a logical anchor to their surroundings. A bee might swarm around a flower, only to find itself interrupted by the rigid geometry of a check pattern. This is her image domino, a way of combining series where airplanes fly through grids and patterns invade organic forms.
The technique relies on a deliberate contrast between the figurative and the abstract. In works like Three Roses on a Checkered Background, the tension is palpable. The motifs—flowers, bees, hands, airplanes—act as singular units in a larger, often fragmented system. There is no attempt to create a cohesive narrative; instead, she explores the space between mythology and meaninglessness. The paintings are both structured and unpredictable.
Her practice involves a rigorous use of repetition and systematic patterns. This creates a sense of order that competes with the expressive nature of her oil on canvas. The results are often:
Though her life ended in 2010, the presence of her work remains anchored in the institutional memory of Denmark. Her paintings occupy spaces within the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, the Arken Museum of Modern Art, and the Sorø Kunstmuseum. These collections hold the evidence of a career that moved far beyond the initial labels of the 1980s art scene.
Her exhibitions have spanned decades, from early shows at Galleri F15 in Moss to significant retrospectives that re-examine her extensive oeuvre. The work continues to be studied for its ability to hold contradictory states—being simultaneously heavy with paint and light with space, both highly organized and fundamentally wild.
