"I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy."
Get the Karen Blixen Poster here.
Blixen not only wrote books, she was also a skilful painter. In 1902-1903 she received training from Charlotte Sode and Julie Meldahl in their art school on Bredgade in Copenhagen, preparing for further studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1910 she also went to an art school in Paris. The two portraits above are of Abdullahi Ahamed, the brother of Farah Aden, a Somali who became her right hand on the farm in Kenya, and a young girl from the Kikuyu tribe.
In 1913, Karen Dinesen became engaged to her second-cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, after a failed love affair with his brother. The couple moved to Kenya, which was at the time part of British East Africa. In early 1914, they used family money to establish a coffee plantation there, hiring local workers; predominantly the Kikuyu people who lived on the farmlands at the time of their arrival.
Details
From a series of prints commissioned by the Blixen Museum, portraying key persons from her autobiography "Out of Africa".
Size: 100 x 62 cm
Poster Print without frame