Purgatory

Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy has been an important point of reference for Alexander Tovborg ever since his training as an art student. Considered a cornerstone in Western literature, the late-medieval poem describes the afterlife as a journey of the soul towards God. The Divine Comedy is divided into three books: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. After Inferno (2017-18), a two-year printmaking tour de force that resulted in an extensive portfolio of 37 etchings, Tovborg turned his attention to Purgatory, the second book of The Divine Comedy – this time in a single, large-scale etching entitled Purgatory Canto XXIX: Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Chariot.
This radical change of format echoes the narrative structure of The Divine Comedy: after Dante’s voyage through the nine circles of Hell, Purgatory describes his upward journey on a mountain island, crossing the seven terraces of suffering and growth, corresponding to the seven deadly sins, culminating in Earthly Paradise at the top of the mountain.
The labyrinth of lines in Tovborg’s Purgatory possesses an almost otherworldly glow, the individual colours merge into one another and seem to pulsate. The choice of colours references William Blake’s famous 19th century illustration of The Divine Comedy and the etching also refers to Beatrice (2023), a large-scale painting that Tovborg created for his 2023 solo exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.

Parallel to his work on the Purgatory print, Tovborg created a second etching that focuses on a detail of the large-scale motif – the Griffin. This mythical creature – half eagle, half lion, pulls Beatrice’s chariot in the 29th canto of Purgatory.