Danish artist Helt Sort creates digital pop art with elements of street art, fashion, politics, advertising, and a twist of surrealism.
Helt Sort (Danish for “Completely Black”) is the artist alias for Christian Løgstrup, born in 1963. Helt Sort is an award-winning designer, art director, and active artist with a strong focus on modern contemporary pop art with a twist of surrealism.
Digital Pop Art by an Award-Winning Designer
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Work hard, then work harder
“When I was young, my father encouraged me a lot and a drawing teacher,” Christian says. “My teacher said if you have talent, then you have to work hard to achieve the necessary skills. Once you have them, you have to work even harder to achieve results.”
Christian says he was a reasonably skilled draftsman and painter, but above average in creativity and conceptual thinking. He made his way past the advertising industry where he was a creative art director and graphic design manager. For the past five years, his artwork has filled all his time.
The great surrealists
My time in the advertising and design industry opened my eyes to a whole new direction.
“As a boy, I looked up a lot to the great surrealists including of course Magritte and Salvador Dali plus our own; the Danish surrealist Wilhelm Freddie,” Christian says. “Their amazing and imaginative picture universes captured me and made little me want to follow in their great footsteps.
“My time in the advertising and design industry opened my eyes to a whole new direction. Here I was fascinated by the eye-catching graffiti and the vibrant street art. Banksy’s conceptual approach was just me and so was the straightforwardness of decorative pop art. Of course, you can not get around the great masters Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
“Today, I work zealously with both surrealism and pop art. Two vastly different directions, which is why I do it under different aliases. As a surrealist, my pseudonym is Hugo Sax and when it comes to pop art, my name is Helt Sort, which is Danish for ‘completely black’. It’s about branding and not letting one art direction disturb the other by mixing them.”
Pop art
“Right now I’m working on my pop art,” he says. “My gallery in Sweden, Miva Fine Art Gallery, gave me the challenge to work with famous people in my art – people of an iconic nature. So now I am working on a larger series of mixed media paintings that would like to be in the gallery during the early spring. Then we hope the corona will eventually fill up so little that more visitors can be opened up and larger events can be held.
“Art … can you make a living from it?” Many ask Christian. His answer is always: “I would not be able to live without it.” He can live off his art, he says, but that’s not the most important thing. “First and foremost, it’s about being allowed to create art. Next, to show my art to as many people as possible. That more people then choose to invest in my art is the last priority.”
Helt Sort lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
To see Helt Sort’s latest artwork, visit Saatchi Art >
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