The temporary exhibition of the museum collection focusses on where and how the Funen painters created their works of art. Art mirrors the situation and space in which it is created, and the Funen painters used the world as their studio – from Svanninge Bakker by Faaborg to Pisa, Italy.

To many artists, the studio is a defined space that enables them to exclude all distractions and focus their attention. To others, the studio is a space without walls – a corner of the countryside or a spot in a public place. Regardless of their choice of location, the artists create work zones that affect not only the process of creation, but also the experience of intimacy conveyed by the works many years after they were painted.

The exhibition ’The World as Their Studio’ explores how the works of the Funen painters came into being and delves into some of the myths that have come to surround the works. The exhibition adopts a broad interpretation of the artist’s workshop – the studio – when demonstrating how artists like Fritz Syberg, Peter Hansen, Johannes Larsen and Jens Birkholm used the countryside as their studio, but often finalised and further developed the scenes at home. Similarly, the boundary between private life and work life seems to be fluent, when the artist worked at home and turned the potted plants on the windowsill, his children lying in bed or his wife painting into art.