Aage Storstein

Aage Storstein was born on 26 July 1900 in Stavanger, Norway. He completed his examen artium at Kongsgaard skole in Stavanger in 1920. That same year he traveled to Paris, where from 1920 to 1921 he studied under Andre Lhote and Pedro Araujo; secondary sources commonly add that he attended the Academie Ranson, the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, and the Academie Colarossi, though the more detailed Norwegian biographical lexicon account names only his teachers, not the specific academies. He returned to Norway and was a pupil at Pola Gauguin's painting school in Oslo in 1924, the same year he first exhibited at the Hostutstillingen (Autumn Exhibition) in Oslo, a show in which his work would appear twelve times between 1924 and 1983. Around 1926 he studied at the Academie Scandinave in Paris under Per Krohg and Henrik Sorensen, and from 1935 to 1936 he studied at Statens Kunstakademi in Oslo under Georg Jacobsen.

In 1938 he won the competition to design the decoration of the West Gallery of the new Oslo City Hall. Oslo City Hall opened in 1950, unveiling his cyclical fresco decoration of Norwegian life, history, and mythology, and that year he received the King's Medal of Merit in Gold. From 1946 to 1949 he served as a professor at Statens Kunstakademi. A major retrospective of his work was mounted at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo in 1961, drawing on loans from private and public collections, and in 1968 he received the Stavanger Aftenblad Cultural Prize. Aage Storstein died on 7 May 1983 in Oslo.

Storstein is remembered principally as one of the artists credited with introducing a Cubist idiom into Norwegian painting; Norsk biografisk leksikon describes him as a pioneer of Cubism in Norwegian art and a major renewer of twentieth-century Norwegian painting. His largest and most publicly discussed achievement, the West Gallery frescoes at Oslo City Hall, remains among the most visible public art commissions in Norway. His inclusion in the National Museum's and Moderna Museet's permanent collections, and the 1961 Kunstnernes Hus retrospective, further cemented his standing within Norwegian modernism.

Storstein's auction market is small, specialized, and centered almost entirely in Norway. Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner (GWPA) in Oslo, which reports having sold 54 works by the artist with hammer prices ranging from NOK 1,200 to NOK 2,200,000, holds his current auction record: NOK 2,200,000 for the painting De forlovede (1930), sold on 24 November 2025. Other notable results at the same house include Bathing Boys (1929) at NOK 1,250,000 in June 2022 and Violin Player (1929) at NOK 620,000 in November 2024. No verified conversion to USD or EUR for the record sale is published here, since no confirmed exchange-rate methodology accompanies the source data. There is no evidence of a currently active international gallery or estate representation; image and reproduction rights are administered through BONO, the Norwegian visual artists' rights organization.

Storstein's market sits almost entirely within Norway and is thin by international standards, with results concentrated at a single specialist house, GWPA, rather than spread across major international salerooms. There is no published catalogue raisonne, so provenance and museum or archival documentation carry extra weight in authentication. His deep representation in Norwegian and Nordic public collections, including the National Museum in Oslo and Moderna Museet, supports his historical standing, but collectors should treat any single auction result with caution given the small number of public sales and the absence of confirmed active gallery or estate representation.