Focus on Woman Kills Injured Man and discuss the Themes.
The subject of a man and a woman in lethal struggle recurs in several of Nerdrum's paintings from the 1990s, such as Buried Alive from 1996. In his 1998 book Odd Nerdrum: Storyteller and Self-Revealer, the art historian and Nerdrum scholar Jan Åke Pettersson interprets Woman Kills Injured Man through a personal crisis Nerdrum had gone through. In the mid 1980s Nerdrum had a relationship with a female student. He left his family for her, but was rejected when she was accepted to the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts. As a reaction, Nerdrum went to her home and slashed the paintings he had given her. According to Pettersson, this episode is also reflected in paintings such as Woman with Fish, Mann med steinbit and Man Bitten by a Snake.
Odd Nerdrum Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts