ABSTRACT
The general understanding of Denmark’s war has been one of defiant resistance, in actuality the occupation also involved official collaboration with Germany, an inconvenient truth that gravely tested the country’s historic reliance on compromise and the internal social cohesion such a focus was meant to ensure. On April 9, 1940, Germany occupied Denmark. Codenamed Operation Weserubung, the invasion was swift and successful, facing just two hours of armed resistance. The development of Helhesten is inextricably bound to the ambiguity of the Danish occupation. Far from some distant historical backdrop, the political, social, and cultural upheaval of the war was something the Danish artists lived through, while continuing to make art. During the first year of the occupation, the Helhesten artists established an artistic network and began systematically developing several creative-critical practices, including appropriation, ludic experimentation, and collective creativity, with a particular preoccupation with fantasy and ordinary aspects of daily life.
