Aasta Hansteen Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
Aasta Hansteen
Aasta Hansteen: Painter and Reformer Aasta Hansteen was a Norwegian painter, writer, and early feminist. Born in Christiania, she began her art education in Copenhagen between 1840 and 1841 to learn drawing, later spending three years at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf studying fine brush alignment. Associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting, she exhibited her work at the 1855 World's Fair in Paris. Upon returning to Norway, she se
rved as the only portrait artist in Christiania for several years. Her most famous painting is a portrait of her father, which is on permanent exhibit at the National Gallery of Norway. Life and Literary Contributions After resigning from portraiture, Hansteen moved to Telemark and later studied with the linguist Ivar Aasen. In 1862, she became the first woman to publish in Nynorsk with an anonymous book. Between 1880 and 1889, she…