He studied at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry with Torbjørn Alvsåker 1946-48 and the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts under Per Palle Storm from 1948 to 1951 as well as under Einar Utzon-Frank at the Art Academy in Copenhagen in 1951 and Ossip Zadkine at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris 1952.
His best-known work is probably the sculpture "The Destroyed City" (1951-1953), represents a man without a heart, a memorial to the destruction of the center of the Dutch city Rotterdam in 1940 by the German Luftwaffe.
She studied with Carl Milles in the summer of 1942 at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan), with Simon Moselsio from 1942 to 1943 at Bennington College (Bennington, Vermont), with Raymond Puccinelli from 1943 to 1945 at the University of California, Berkeley, with Oronzio Maldarelli from 1945 to 1946 at Columbia University (New York City) and with Ossip Zadkine in Paris from 1949 to 1950.
It became the nexus for those at the cutting-edge of art at the time, when Erik Satie, Henri Matisse, Nina Hamnett, Amedeo Modigliani, Ossip Zadkine, Juan Gris, and Chaim Soutine started dropping by in the evenings for conversation and occasionally to draw.