KURBITS
Kategori: Allmänt
Kurbits Painting is a swedish decorative painting tecnique, it derived from Dalarna and Hälsingland in the middel/north of Sweden. Kurbits is a latin word meaing Pumpkin, the style was so named because of the recemblence to pumkin flowers. Kurbits was traditinally used with religious motifs on walls and furniture. This is the arts of peasants and was used in their homes as decortaive elements since they often could not afford wallpapers or high priced decortavie painters. So they made up there own kind of decorative painting.
At first it is an urn with a bunch of flowers, but during the 1790s the painting becomes increasingly expressive; with flowers flown out of the picture, the urn disappears and finally there is only an abstract floral motif.
The motifs was often inspierd from the Bible. The biblical figures would be dressed in the district's own costumes so that the peasents felt a conection to the biblical stories. Another source of inspiration was simple motifs from Germany and France, with designs from the age of stairs (where mortality is symbolically depicted as steps). Seen above. Kurbits had its heyday between the yeras of 1780 and 1870.
I´ve been working on my own kurbits, some of the process you can see above. It´s the blue and yellow very unfinished painting.
Kubits is probebly most know outside of sweden as the decorative ornament on the swedish Dalahäst.
Images: from google and private
