Konstnärshuset – Etta Säfve and Håkan Berg

I should go there more often. The Konstnärshuset (Artist’s House) in Stockholm’s city centre is a beautiful building designed by Ludwig Peterson, built in 1899. Inside, Art Nouveau is hanging – and painted on the walls. This house was founded by the Swedish Artists Association, which has a history of building bridges between the Academy of Art and the slightly more avant-garde artists. It is still their property.

This art association switches very quickly from one exhibition to another, which is another reason to go there more often. They always have an art exhibition at the Stora Galleriet on the second floor, and an exhibition of graphic design at the Grafikgalleriet on the third floor. This time the artist and graphic designer were Etta Säfve and Håkan Berg.

I must admit that I did not like the work of Etta Säfve, mostly consisting of charcoal drawings, very much. I did not see the extra value in these spherical, dark drawings. They were all landscape-like, abandoned beach-like drawings, and therefore I think the idea could be triggering this lost feeling, but it didn’t. The projections that were there were conceptually stronger than the drawings. Unless I missed something important, I think this was not the best thing I have seen so far.

Håkan Berg makes very colourful prints (and as I once said: I am a sucker for colour, but I’ll try to stay professional). He seems to be trying to find some kind of tension in his images: most of the prints have one basis colour and a tiny figure in one or two other colours somewhere on that coloured plane. In some works he succeeds better than in others, but this tension is definitely there. He also says himself that he keeps on experimenting, also with different materials, and indeed, there were also a few small paintings in which he tried the same, and succeeded best. The image I show here is a photo of his works in another gallery, but they were also at the Konstnärshuset. They are all made in one colour, and because of that the only thing noticeable about them is that they are not made in a square. That makes them interesting, because why are artists always bound to this square shape? Few artists dare to change that.

Next exhibition in the Stora Galleriet called “Showroom” is of different Swedish artists; it is already open (for only six days!) and it looks very promising. I definitely should go there more often.


- Funfact: Carl Larsson (yes, the one I stole the image of the bare butts from) was the first chair of this gallery’s art club.

24-29 feb.: “Showroom” at Kunstnärshuset
Smålandsgatan 7, Stockholm