Marie-Louise Ekman
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'Ett baby-monument och en Olle Baertling-tavla'
Signed M.L De Geer Bergenstråhle and dated 1980. Gouache on silk in artist's frame 40 x 31 cm.
Provenance
Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm.
Private Collection.
Exhibitions
Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm, 'Marie-Louise Ekman', 12 - 30 April 1980, cat. no. 6.
Literature
Maria Lind, 'Svensk Nutidskonst 4: Marie-Louise Ekman', 1994, illustrated p. 16.
More information
At the exhibition at Galerie Aronowitsch in Stockholm in 1980, Marie-Louise Ekman showed a series of remarkable paintings. Marie-Louise Ekman painted her figures and individuals placed on podiums - but always in front of different paintings by Olle Baertling.
"All works in the series have Olle Baertling's motifs as a background. So I simply placed my own figures, such as Picasso's ladies and my own children in the form of birds, on podiums in the paintings. If something is placed on a podium, it is somehow transformed into a sculpture. Like a memory of a past time."
Marie-Louise Ekman
The legendary gallerist William Aronovitsch and his gallery had a significant influence on Marie-Louise Ekman. In a sense, the gallery can be said to be a vital part of her artistic education and development.
"We had his gallery as a café after a work shift, very nice. There you could browse through his books and catalogues and I saw Baertling and the paintings in the warehouse. From the very beginning I was provoked. Non-figurative - I couldn't understand it! I started questioning William: "What do you like about this?" He explained. "It's not right what you're saying," I said.
Then he gave me a catalogue, which in those days was really nicely done. I looked at them regularly but didn't engage with them and came back. Like a riddle I couldn't figure out the answer to. Then one day I had the experience of a lifetime. One day I felt strongly that it was an image of thinking and could be an image from inside the brain. How a thought develops and how it represents something non-figurative that cannot be captured in any other way than non-figurative. It was breathtaking.
Then I wanted to see more and more and more. I got high. Like leaps of thought and movements of thought. Then it was fun to have them as a kind of space that my figures could move around in. Instead of city rooms or rooms in a house, I made a room out of his painting. I was sure to emphasise in each painting that it was Olle Baertling's painting. All paintings exist, I haven't invented any. But it's my colours that try to resemble his, but I haven't measured them. I painted them in my own way. After that I also did Mondrian and Picasso, but I only had black and white books."
The quote is taken from a conversation between Marie-Louise Ekman and Paulina Sokolow from spring 2014. The painting in the auction is one of the paintings shown at Galerie Aronowitsch's famous exhibition in 1980.
One of Marie-Louise Ekman's "Baertling paintings" from 1980, "A Dalí Monument, a Picasso Monument and an Olle Baertling Painting", is part of the Moderna Museet collection (Ref no. MOM/2017/56).
Artist
Marie-Louise Ekman is without a doubt one of Sweden's most eccentric artists. The consistency in her expression is striking, with a distinctive language that is unmistakably her own.
Ekman's artistry is timeless and continuously relevent. She is a leading and influential artist who often depicts everyday environments, but does not align herself with the absurdist and surrealist art forms. She travels unhindered over artistic buondaries and often ustilises art historical references, incorporating them with pop-culture references. Ekmans konstnärskap har i mycket präglats av hennes anarkistiska och klarsynta angrepp på normalitet som ständigt har manifesterats i en spännvidd som låtit henne ingå i kretsen kring den inflytelserika undergroundtidningen "Puss" och med separatutställningar på Galerie Aronowitsch.
When looking closer at her multifaceted artisty one discovers that she is a recycler. There is barely a motif that is not repeated in more than one context, not a figure that does not stir up déjà vu. One first encounters these elements in objects or paintins, then in movies, tv-seris and radio programmes. Although the media sources vary in theme and tone over the decades, Ekman continues to reference media through her art, and it is thanks to this that Ekman feels forever young.
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