Elected Chairman of the Young Artists’ Society. Has a one-man exhibition of watercolours at the Holst-Halvorsen Gallery in Oslo. The National Gallery and the Riiks Gallery in Oslo purchase works.

Exhibits woodcuts in the exhibition 7 Young Artists from Norway at the Art Hall, Goteborg, in Sweden. The Council purchases two works.

Exhibits woodcuts in the exhibition 14 Young Artists from Norway at the Stavanger Art Association and at the Artists' House in Oslo.

 

Awarded the prestigious Printmaker Prize and invited to produce a lithograph for the periodical Actuel Kunst.

Appointed artist-in-residence at Ekely, an artists’ colony centred around Edvard Munch’s former studio and home on the outskirts of Oslo. The family continues to live there for the next 20 years.

Widerberg gradually changes his signature Frantz to Franz to Frans. 

He is the guest artist at the Harstad Music Festival of Northern Norway, with an exhibition of prints. 

Participates in a touring exhibition in West Germany. 

The periodical Nye Bonytt commissions Widerberg to write a series of articles on printmaking. 

Exhibits drawings at the Young Artists’ Association in Oslo.

Wins the competition for the Psychiatric Clinic at Haukeland Hospital in Bergen with a design for a ceramic mural depicting a group of horsemen. 

In association with the printer Eugene Pattersen, who had previously worked with Edvard Munch, Widerberg begins to explore the lithographic process. 

Provides lithographs for the National Art in Schools scheme.

At the age of 34, he has his first one-man exhibition at the Artists’ Association in Oslo where he exhibits paintings on the theme of Hoverers and Horses in the Landscape.

Installs the 15-metre-long ceramic mural Riders, commissioned for the entrance hall of the Psychiatric Clinic at Haukeland Hospital, Bergen. Designed and created in collaboration with ceramicists Dagny (1936 – 2001) and Finn Hald (1929 – 2010). 

Awarded a three-year State Grant. 

Presents the TV programme Will You Join Us with his 8-year-old son Nico.

 

Becomes a Board Member of the Artists’ Association from 1968 – 1978, and the Board of the National Organisation for the Visual Arts from 1968 – 1971. 

Exhibits watercolours and lithographs at the Artists’ Association in Oslo.

Participates in the group exhibition Nordic Art at Charlottenburg, Copenhagen.

Invited to participate in the group exhibition Norway Now, organised by the Smithsonian Institute, in Washington DC. His controversial series of paintings ‘Five Letters to America’, critical of the US Government’s engagement in Vietnam; the shooting of students at Kent State University in Ohio and their policy concerning the Civil Rights Movement are only accepted when eight other artists threatened to withdraw their work. The exhibition tours America for two years to considerable critical acclaim.

The film and TV presenter Pål Bang-Hansen (1937 – 2010) lends Widerberg his house in Tovo, asmall village in the Faraldi Valley in Liguria, Italy. Widerberg travels extensively visiting Rome, Pompeii, Arezzo and Assisi, as well as archaeological excavations in Sicily.