Utforskande penna-monument, Picasso-dam och en Olle Bærtling-målning

(Exploratory pen monument, Picasso lady and an Olle Bærtling painting)

Signed M.L. De Geer Bergenstråhle and dated 1981.

(incl. Milky Yellow original frame chosen, and painted, by the artist).

It is not uncommon for Marie-Louise Ekman to embrace pop cultural references in her art. Nancy, from Ernie Bushmiller’s (1905 – 1982, American cartoonist, best known for creating the comic strip character Nancy in 1933. His work is noted for its simple graphic style) cartoon, and Minnie Mouse, for example, turned up in early pieces like Mimmi ser mat / Minnie sees food (1967, assemblage in acrylic class box) and Lisa Bajsar (från Lisa och Sluggo) / Lisa Poops (from Nancy) (1973, mixed media and collage mounted on canvas).

Periodically, Ekman has also borrowed works by other established artists. Men like Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944), Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510) and Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989) have been sourced by Ekman for backgrounds, figures and details in works such as Ett Dalí-monument, ett Picasso-monument och en Olle Bærtling-tavla / A Dalí Monument, a Picasso Monument and an Olle Bærtling Painting (1980, gouache on silk, 56.4 × 78 cm incl. artist’s original picture frame, MOM/2017/56) in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm (whose collections also include Salvador Dalí’s legendary L’Énigme de Guillaume Tell / The Enigma of Wilhelm Tell [1933, oil on canvas, 201.5 × 346.5 cm, NM 6069] that inspired Ekman).

Olle Bærtling (1911 – 1981, Swedish abstract painter and sculptor), in particular, played a significant role in the creation of these paintings, many of which were shown at Ekman’s, nowadays legendary, exhibition at Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm (Marie-Louise De Geer Bergenstråhle, April 12 - 30, 1980). Klas Gustafson (born 1950, Swedish journalist and author) writes (in Marie-Louise Ekmans två liv [Marie-Louise Ekman’s Two Lives], 2015):

In a series of paintings from the early eighties, she used Bærtling’s straight triangular patterns as backdrops. It wasn’t intended as irony; she admired Bærtling. He was at that time an elderly gentleman, artistically strict, but weak for beautiful women: he agonized before going to the gallery where Marie-Louise’s paintings were displayed. ‘She doesn’t know how to spell gouache’ was, according to Marie-Louise, his only comment. She says he was right. What he thought of her way of using the paint, however, remains unclear to this very day.

The iconic paintings depict figures (in the form of works of art and/or individuals) placed on podiums (thus becoming monuments) in front of various compositions by Olle Bærtling. Ekman remembered, in conversation with Paulina Sokolow (born 1970, Swedish art historian, writer and curator), in the spring of 2014:

All the works in the series have Olle Bærtling motifs as a background. So, I simply placed my own figures, such as Picasso’s ladies and my own children, in the guise of birds, on podiums in the paintings. If something is placed on a podium, it is somehow solidified into a sculpture. As a memory of a bygone era. […] We used his [legendary gallerist William Aronowitsch, 1935 - 2018] gallery as a café after our shifts, very nice. There you could browse through books and catalogues, and I saw Bærtling paintings in the storage. From the very beginning, I was provoked. Abstract - I didn’t understand it! […] Then William gave me a catalogue, very generously. I looked at the images regularly but got no contact with them. Like a riddle I couldn’t figure out the answer to. Then one day I had an epiphany: I felt strongly that Bærtling’s paintings were images of thoughts from inside the brain. Images of how a thought emerges and represents something abstract that you cannot capture in any other way. It was breathtaking. After that I wanted to see more and more and more. I got high. […] It was fun to have them as a kind of room, instead of urban or domestic spaces, for my figures and characters to move around in. I simply turned his paintings into rooms. I was careful, however, to point out in each painting that it was Olle Bærtling’s picture. All the paintings exist, I haven’t made anyone up. But they are my colours, trying to resemble Bærtling’s. I painted them my way. After that, I’ve also done Mondrian and Picasso, but I only had black and white books.

Utforskande penna-monument, Picasso-dam och en Olle Bærtling-målning (Exploratory pen monument, Picasso lady and an Olle Bærtling painting) is one of the forty-eight paintings (all executed in gouache on silk and measuring 36 x 27 cm each), from 1981, that were shown in the exhibition Monument, 1981 at Galleri Bohman – Knäpper, Stockholm, in the spring of 2018. Twenty of the paintings would later lay the foundation for the lithographic portfolio Monument 1981 – 2021 published by Hedenius Editions in 2021.

Provenance

The Artist’s collection, Stockholm.

Galleri Bohman-Knäpper, Stockholm.

Bukowskis, Stockholm, Sale 654, Contemporary Art & Design, 24 – 25 April 2024, lot 310.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above sale).

Exhibitions

Galleri Bohman – Knäpper, Stockholm, Monument, 1981, 17 February – 18 March 2018.

Literature

(Ed.) Angelika Knäpper, Monument – 1981 - M.L Ekman, exhibition catalogue, 2018, illustrated full page in colour.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation