Självporträtt (Self-portrait)

Signed and dated ‘Gittan Jönsson -77’

Katarina Wadstein MacLeod (professor of history of art at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University) has written the following (in Bakom gardinerna. Hemmet i svensk konst under nittonhundratalet, 2018) about this realistically executed self-portrait, that set a new world record for the artist when Firestorm Foundation acquired it for SEK 1.3 million at Uppsala Auktionskammare in Stockholm (Modern & Contemporary Sale – Swedish Art, 12 May 2023, lot 763):

In the painting Self-Portrait, 1977, the figure in the picture leans against a door frame and looks out from her home. We look at her surrounded by her environment, but we also look into a century-long negotiation about the home as a place to develop the individual, as well as something to radically distance ourselves from. The figure in the portrait looks back at its viewers from its specific horizon, an apartment in Stockholm in the early 1970s. The threshold is metaphorical and reflects a shift in her own life, but it also reflects the shift in the time around 1977. When the 1960s turned into the 1970s, several of Stockholm’s young artists had a couple of turbulent years behind them, and the women’s movement’s call for the personal to be political around them. […] Self-portraits, typical of the period in their realism, follow an art-historical convention: to stage the interests and profession of the portrayed with attributes. The artist is dressed in Mahjong trousers, a democratic fashion of the time and a brand for which Jönsson made graphic designs. To the right in the picture is a piano, music is an art form Jönsson has returned to, both in the creation of music and images. On one wall you can see a poster from the Eritrean liberation movement, on the other one of her own paintings. The fan heater in the middle of the floor shows that it is cold in the apartment with the high ceiling and the many doors. When the artist portrays herself, she does so as in a home, rather than a studio - regardless of whether the home was her studio. In the painting, it is possible to discern the interests of the portrayed artist, as well as life in the home as a feminist issue and, not least, the home as a motif in a centuries-long art historical tradition. Shortly after her studies at Konstfack’s advertising programme, Jönnson became involved in the women’s movement, where her own home environment, or rather the personal life that takes place there, was a central theme. A few years earlier, Jönsson had been drawn into the left-wing separatist rebel movement, which lasted a couple of months, where a home of one’s own was politically impossible.

Gittan Jönsson challenged the traditional Swedish art scene of the 1960s and 1970s. Politically and socially motivated she rejected “bourgeois art” with works exploring and covering several genres and disciplines, such as art (including poster art and advertising), music and film (in the background of Självporträtt / Self-portrait another of her paintings, The Film Recording, can be glimpsed hanging on the wall, depicting her work as property manager/assistant on film sets with directors like Marie-Louise Ekman [born 1944] and Carl Johan de Geer [born 1938]). The realistically rendered scenery in the background of Självporträtt / Self-portrait illustrates how the young artist is finding her own way in life, whilst trying to balance political awareness and activism on one hand, and family life on the other. This is cleverly demonstrated by the piano. Above it hangs a poster related to an exhibition expressing solidarity with the freedom fighters in Eritrea. On the piano, however, stands a photograph of her son Kalle. His birth, and the ensuing years, made Jönsson aware of the injustices and inequalities that exist between the sexes, not least in the art world. Her political involvement now gradually shifted focus to the women’s movement and in 1977 she helped organize the Women’s Culture Festival in Stockholm with three days of film, theater, art, music and literature. Three years later she also participated in the exhibition We Work for Life, exclusively showing female artists. As Jönsson remembered it later (interview in Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 24 November 2019): “I belonged to the second wave women’s movement, after the first to fight for the right to vote. We were part of a huge wave that swept through the 1970s in the United States and Europe. We needed a new concept of culture. Women’s experiences had not come to light, we were made invisible.”

Provenance

Stockholms Auktionsverk, Sweden, Internationella – Moderna – Grafik, 3 December 1992, lot 6133.

Stockholms Auktionsverk, Sweden, Design, Paintings & Sculptures, 5 May 2011, lot 1660.

Åmells konsthandel, Stockholm.

Uppsala Auktionskammare, Sweden, Modern & Contemporary Sale – Swedish Art, 12 May 2023, lot 763.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Exhibitions
Galleri Händer, Stockholm & Malmö, Sweden, 1978.

Galleri Garmer, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1978.

Travelling exhibition organized by ’Nämnden för utställningar av nutida svensk konst i utlandets regi’ (NUNSKU), Federal Republic of Germany; France; Belgium and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 5 x 1000 Ans / 5 x 1000 Jahre: Lena Cronqvist, Lenke Rothman, Channa Bankier, Margareta Renberg, Gittan Jönsson, 1978 – 1980.

Ystads konstmuseum, Ystad, Sweden, Gittan Jönsson, 12 March – 10 April 2005.

Marabouparken, Sundbyberg, Sweden, Gittan Jönsson: Parallella linjer, 9 March – 19 June 2016.

Literature
Ingela lind & Gösta Svensson, 5 x 1000 Ans / 5 x 1000 Jahre, exhibition catalogue, travelling exhibition organized by ’Nämnden för utställningar av nutida svensk konst i utlandets regi’ (NUNSKU), Federal Republic of Germany; France; Belgium and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 1978, illustrated full page in colour, p. 38 (under the title Autoportrait / Selbstporträt).

Gittan Jönsson, exhibition catalogue, Marabouparken, Sundbyberg, Sweden, 2016, mentioned and illustrated full page in colour.

Katarina Wadstein MacLeod, Bakom gardinerna. Hemmet i svensk konst under nittonhundratalet, 2018, mentioned p. 164 and illustrated, full page in colour, p. 165.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation