Page 60 - Studio International - November 1966

Six Swedish painters

Of the six Swedish artists exhibiting in London at the
ARTS COUNCIL GALLERY this November, Lage Lindell is
the oldest. He belongs to a group of artists who at the time
of their common début in Stockholm in 1947 helped to
bring about a radical change of direction in Swedish art
which, because of the war, had been isolated from de-
velopments on the Continent. In the last years of the
'forties and the first half of the 'fifties, 'the men of 1947',
as they are called, stood at the centre of a debate which
launched the concept of 'concrete' art. Already during the
inter-war period a certain number of Swedish artists had
found their way into Léger's studio in Paris, but Sweden
seems not to have taken seriously nor to have been mature
enough to assimilate ideas relating to autonomous 'con-
crete' art until after the war.
At the same time as ideas of informalism in art were
brought to bear on the debate, the concrete artists ceased
to exist as a group and instead went their own ways. Lage
Lindell was among the least dogmatic of those who
stressed the autonomy of the painting in its relation to
reality. With him the new ideas had also been fused with
a local narrative tradition, principally transmitted by his
teacher at the Swedish Royal Academy, Sven Erikson.
Lindell's paintings can be considered descriptions of
people and events which he has come across. At the same
time, the concrete interest in the picture surface as a
formal factor is evident. A picture by him can appear to
be altogether flat until we suddenly discover somewhere
in it a slender form bending outward and forward like
figures grasping for space outside the picture. It is as if
the forms in Matisse's papiers coupes were to leave the
picture plane and make real the plasticity to which they
allude. By painting on unstretched canvases Lage Lindell
has done away with the predominant effect of a defined
area of stretched canvas. The shapes become in conse-
quence freer. As he has said : 'You should be able to cut
out shapes, take them with you, and place them in the
snow.'
Associated with the movement of concrete art but paral-
lel with it, Lars Englund went through a slow but con-
sistent development. Untouched by expressionism, both
abstract and figurative, which during the 'fifties left such
marked traces on Swedish art, he has been working on
qualities which were already present in his ascetically-

Lars Englund
Film Montage 1963
66 1/8 x 39 3/8 in.