Knud Pedersen

Knud Pedersen (1925 – 18 December 2014) was a Danish artist and resistance leader. He was born in the Danish city of Odense. His career as a public figure started in 1942, when he, together with nine other young Danes, founded the resistance group Churchill Klubben (The Churchill Club). After the war, he turned to the world of arts and culture where he was excelled as an organizer.

Knud Pederson was a resistance fighter during World War II. Angered that the Danish government had let the Nazis invade without the Danish army putting up a fight, he and a group of Danish teenage boys started the Churchill Club, named after the British leader Winston Churchill. The Churchill Club sabotaged cars, train stations and stole many weapons and explosives from the Nazis. Knud was arrested and tried for sabatoge, stealing, destruction of property and others. He was arrested and put in prison for two years. The first year he was in a city prison, called King Hans Gades Jail and then was moved to Nyborg State Prison were he was treated harshly and unfairly. Before his release on may 27th, 1944, he took his university test. He proved that a saboteur could become a judge in Denmark. He did not know what to do after that. The resistance refused him, since the Nazis were watching him, and he could easily be identified on covert missions. Eventually he joined K company, division B, group number 4. They moved weapons caches from place to place to avoid German detection.

After many a sabotage actions and 2 years in prison, Pedersen turned to the arts, partly as an artist, but mainly as an organiser. Before he became a saboteur, he loved painting. His father supported him so much that he opened an account for him at a local art store, allowing him to buy any supplies that he desired. His dream was to make art available to everyone, and to this end he launched several projects. In 1943 he got permission from the authorities to set up Byens billede, the Picture of the City, an empty frame in which paintings could be exhibited. In 1945 he founded his Kunstbibliotek, or Art Library, an art rental space where people could rent a painting for the price of a packet of cigarettes. Both projects still exist: passers-by will meet the Picture of the City on Nikolaj Kirke plads in Copenhagen.

As a young bohemian in Copenhagen in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pedersen got to know a great many local artists. Among them was Arthur Köpcke or Køpcke, a German national who had emigrated to Denmark in 1958. Køpcke ran a small gallery, Galerie Køpcke, that showed some of the most advanced art in Europe at that time. Besides works by local artists he exhibited works by Piero Manzoni, Christian Megert, Diter Rot, Robert Filliou, Niki de Saint Phalle and Daniel Spoerri. Via Rot, Filliou and Spoerri he also came into contact with George Maciunas, the man who invented the name Fluxus. He offered to organise a Fluxus concert in Copenhagen, and Maciunas agreed.

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