Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity.

[3] Adolf Gustav Thorsen was born to a family of craftsmen, just outside Halse og Harkmark, a former municipality in Mandal.

[citation needed] Vigeland spent the years 1891 to 1896 in several voyages abroad, including Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Florence.

In the French capital he frequented Auguste Rodin's workshop, while in Italy he experimented with ancient and Renaissance artworks.

In these years the themes that would later dominate his inspiration - death and the relationship between man and woman - first appeared.

Initially, the idea of the Oslo municipality was to put the fountain in Eidsvolls plass, the square in front of the Parliament of Norway.

[9] Some art critics considered Vigeland's sculptures to be expressions of nazi or fascist aesthetics, and he has been compared to Arno Breker.

[10] Writing in Verdens Gang, a newspaper started by former Norwegian resistance members shortly after the German occupation of Norway ended in 1945, Pola Gauguin wrote that the Vigeland installation "reeks of Nazi mentality.”[11] The works in the installation depict individuals variously possessed: In agony and shock; Rapture and torture, from birth to death and beyond.

[12] Posterity, a 2015 play by Doug Wright, imagined the interaction between Vigeland and Henrik Ibsen.