Art history for sale

If you want to know more about the Swedish art history, be sure to drop by at Kurt Svensson Konsthandel at Vasterlånggatan 76 in the Old Town of Stockholm. The gallerist has over 50 years of experience in selling Swedish art, from the 1800s up to now. You would think that roughly all the big names would be at museums and auction houses right now, but surprisingly he knows where to find them, and how to sell them, and he is also very friendly and keen on telling you all about the artists. He has quite a big selection of classic and orientalist (which means that the artist went to the Orient and painted very idyllic but nowadays stereotypical and often racist scenes) paintings, among others by Frans Wilhelm Odelmark. He also has a lot of modern art, for example by the in Scandinavia well known Cobra artist Bengt Lindström. We know Cobra off course from artists such as Karel Appel, Constant Nieuwenhuis, and the Danish Asger Jorn, but there were many artists, in different fields, who were a member of this art movement. Kurt Svensson’s has also has some very surprising things, such as a drawing by Ilon Wikland, whom I deeply admire as the illustrator of many Astrid Lindgren books. He also has Pop Art prints by Hans Arnold, which can be best described as politically engaged and somewhat eerie drawings that strongly remind of the great illustrations by Alan Aldridge (you know, the Beatles illustrator). One artist of this day, whom the gallerist claims to have made famous himself, is the Chinese Realist artist Zhao Kailin. Whether you like the recent Realism movement or not, these portraits are very intense and go further than depicting physical reality. Not only because of the size (why do Realist paintings have to be big, to remind of the original Realist paintings? It would be the only resemblance then), but also because of the character of the portrayed, that gets a lot of attention. Overall I can say that this is a very interesting gallery with a mishmash of styles and periods, but wit good quality. *I am sorry to say that some of the links in this text are in Swedish. This is because in the rest of Europe, a lot of important European artists are mentioned in art history books, but very little Scandinavian ones. These artists, though great, are therefore only known in Scandinavia.

Going for a walk at Södermalm

If you are in Stockholm and you want to see a lot of art in one day, go to the island Södermalm. Get off at subway station Slussen and go to Hornsgatan. This very nice street in Stockholm is bursting of nice shops on the left side, and art galleries on the right.

One example of a nice art gallery is Kunst och Folk. They have mostly Swedish artists and graphic artists and the quality is very good in my opinion. Galleri Puckeln is also worth mentioning, because of the funny name, but also because of the flamboyant choice of artists, although not everything was similarly exciting to me.

If you see steps down to Pustegränd, drop by at number 6: it’s Galleri Tersaeus. The gallery owner does not speak English very well, but he is kind and has good taste. Adorable art works of the illustrative kind can be seen there, (when I was there he had works by Alina Witwitzka and Eva Svennergård, the last one being extremely cute and original), as well as works with a touch of humour. I saw aquarells of Peter Czerniak that resembled romantic harbor sights, but looking closer there were cranes and building sites in it.

The best thing I saw there was actually at the beginning of the street: the artists association Grafiska Sällskapet. Lots and lots of good quality prints hang on the walls and are accessible in large drawers. The association exists over 100 years now, and they have lots of exhibitions of good quality (the work of Jan-Anders Hansson and Kjell Moritz that I saw there was incredibly good). Unless they are closed to hang a new exhibition, it is always worth stepping inside there and taking the time to go through all the prints of the various artists there.

There are much more galleries, such as Galleri Hera, Galleri Abante, Galleri Kaolin and many more; it depends on your taste where to go in. You can also drop by at the nice ceramics shop called Blås & Knåda, or the picturesque teashop near the end of the street. And if you are at the end of Hornsgatan, you are treated with a nice park where you can relax and process everything you have seen. Then, close by there is the subway station Hornstull, so your tired feet don’t have to walk you back through the whole street again.

List of galleries I mentioned:

Grafiska Sälskapet – Hornsgatan 6
Galleri Puckeln – Hornsgatan 26
Blås & Knåda – Hornsgatan 26A
Kunst och Folk – Hornsgatan 34
Galleri Hera – Hornsgatan 36
Galleri Abante – Hornsgatan 44
Galleri Kaolin – Hornsgatan 50
Galleri Tersoeus – Pustegränd 6

Parallel worlds - Eija-Liisa Ahtila at the Moderna Museet

Trees are usually props in a scene; they are part of the setting in which a situation tales place. Entering the first room of the exhibition space, trees are the protagonists in various drawings. They act like people in funny comics, they bend, twist and mirror the visitor – literally, with mirrors.

Trees are important in the work of Ahtila. In her work, that mainly exists of video, the scenery, and especially the enormous pine trees that can be seen all over Scandinavia, get a lot of attention. The main artwork that was shown at the exhibition: The Annunciation (2010) is a religious one: three screens show one movie from three different angles. We see how a small drama club prepares and practices for an annunciation play. During the movie there is a lot of attention for the scenery, which gives an almost sacred feel to that what the players are going through in the process of practicing and rehearsing. When they finally play it, it seems as if the annunciation is really happening.

Another work that I found interesting was a portrait of a pine tree on film. Ahtila found it difficult to portray something as big as a tree: if you want to have it on screen from ‘head to toe’, you get all the other trees on the portrait as well, and it turns into a group portrait. Therefore, she made several takes, first of the ‘feet’ of the tree, then a bit higher, then higher again, until she reached the top. All these takes were shown on their own screen, next to each other, together showing one moving tree – sideways, as if lying down. It is a great solution to her problem, because it really works as a portrait. You can see and enjoy his branches and needles waving in the wind and see it as an individual.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila is a Finnish woman who has quite a résumé. Her work has been among others at MoMA in New York, Tate Modern in London and Kunsthalle in Zürich. Now she can add the Moderna Museet in Stockholm to it, and I think she deserves that. She questions the little things in life that we take for granted, and gives these things – a tree, a bird, a feeling – the chance to be the protagonist, without overdoing it.

Until May 6th at Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Johan Patricny – serious business or classical humour?

I saw some work of Johan Patricny at Liljevalchs Konsthall, and I was very interested. So when I found out that he had a solo exhibition of his most recent paintings at Galleri Agardh-Tornvall, I went there to see it. You can see that Patricny works in a traditional technique; it is mostly oil on canvas, layered up to create depth and natural colour. In my previous blog post, where I mention his work, I wrote about his museum paintings: “It is art within art, painted in a traditional technique, with a funny twist.”

According to the gallerist I have it all wrong. I asked him about Patricny’s technique (I was right about that part), and wanted to know whether he painted at the museum to make these works, or made photos that he used at his studio. The gallerist assured me that he worked at the museum, with his model who we see in the paintings, and that pleased me: it is how a classical artist should operate.

But the ironic twist that I happen to see in his work is “in the eye of the beholder”: according to the gallerist the artist is very serious about his work and did not intend to add some irony. But then: why this subject? Why make the art viewer the subject of a painting? Why the Old Masters in the background, and modern people in the foreground, with their much too serious faces? Is it a tribute to the old masters? Is it a form of ‘moving on’; extending the classical tradition to this era? In my opinion that is not enough to cover it. That alone can’t be a reason to go and paint at the museum; the selfreflexivity with a twist is there, right under our noses, and it has to be understood as a little wink. And that very wink makes it interesting.

There were also other works hanging at the gallery: mostly flower- and landscape paintings. His technique is rougher, and in my opinion it misses something that the museum work has: somehow they don’t intrigue me that much. It is as if the subject that inspires him is not there. In his model work you can see what makes the model interesting for him: the pale skin, the rosy cheeks, the young and slightly naïve look on her face. In the landscapes I get the idea that it does not really make him tick.

For more art in a classical technique with a wink, see the work of Maarten Welbergen.


On show until tomorrow:
Galleri Agardh-Tornvall
Sibyllegatan 65, Stockholm

Galleri Ingela S – The masculine figures of Leif Jacobsson

Interesting work hangs in the small gallery of Ingela S. Once inside, you see abstract, colourful work as well as imposing metal male figures. This artist, Leif Jacobsson, likes working with big, rough materials.

Jacobsson’s work is strong, masculine and monumental. I especially liked the large male figures for their monumentality, but also for the technique Jacobsson uses, as shown in the image above. He shapes strips of metal and puts them together in an open structure, until it results in a human form. This makes it possible to see through the figure, and it makes the metal on the one hand behave like a harness, but on the other hand like human flesh, ribs or muscle tissue, because the forms are organic, and because the human figure is not complete. That makes these works fascinating.

Also the painting ‘Expansion’, a large, almost abstract painting that depicts an enormous city as far as the eye can see was a very strong image to me. However, I have some difficulty with the abstract works with leading titles such as ‘Threat’ and ‘Roaring Silence’. On his website he writes about these works as “poetical expression of nature”, and there he lost me. To me it gets a bit too far-fetched there, because we have to believe the word of the artist to view and understand the artwork. An artwork should stand on its own, not guided by a name, hoping that anyone would recognise the theme in it, because people do, or they simply don’t, whether you give hints in names or not. But then again, also the technique of these works is again impeccable, so they are definitely worth taking a look at.



Tomorrow is the last day this exhibition is on show at:
Galleri Ingela S
Klara Östra Kyrkogata 2 A, Stockholm

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

Renée Lord at Galleri Eva Solvang

On the last day that this exhibition was open I ran uphill in the heart of the city to see the exhibition of Renée Lord at Galleri Eva Solvang. I entered a tiny, but very tasteful gallery.

Who Renée Lord is (the name suggests a woman), stays somewhat of a mystery; at least there is no website of her and her work. But at the website of the gallery some of her photos and sculptures are shown. The photographs are of nature, mostly woods and watery scenes, and the composition, though the subject is organic, is sharp and very well balanced. The photograph on the invitation in fact looks so well in balance, that it is almost eerie – how can trees be that fixed? Until you see what she has done to it.

The sculptures by Lord are also very good: it is the same contrast between tightness and organic forms that give the sculptures enormous tension. Also, the way in which she balances form and rest form is very interesting. I am glad that I dropped by just in time.

The next exhibition at Eva Solvang’s will be of Gösta Backlund, who uses a combination of aquarelle and enamel. The invitation looks promising, so I will definitely go up there again soon to see it.



Unfortunately closed now. Exhibition Gösta Backlund opens tomorrow at:
Galleri Eva Solvang, Grevgatan 26, Stockholm