Malin Gyllenstierna

Very little is known about the artist Malin Gyllenstierna. In the catalogue for the Liljevalchs exhibition "Gabriele Münter's Swedish Artist Friends" in 1993, we learn that she was born on 2 December 1889 in Karlskrona. Later, Gyllenstierna, like many of her contemporary female artist friends and colleagues, studied in Paris under André Lhote and embraced new ways to appreciate and develop the seemingly radical visual language. In Paris, Gyllenstierna was part of the art circles and was acquainted with, among others, Georg Pauli.

In 1915, she married in Alexandria to the former colonel of the Egyptian coast guard in Cairo, Enrico Pardo. In 1917, she exhibited eight works at the Liljevalchs exhibition "Swedish Female Artists" alongside, among others, Sigrid Hjertén and Gabriele Münter. These three displayed their works in the same room. An art critic wrote about the room where the three were shown, "That room is for those who understand more than others." In connection with the exhibition, August Brunius, writing for Svenska Dagbladet on 27 January 1917, said of Gyllenstierna: "The former is one of the few Nordic cubists of the true and genuine kind, refined in her compositions of coloured planes and not at all provocative." After the exhibition, almost no information is available about Gyllenstierna other than that she died on 30 July 1980 in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England.

This auction offers a unique opportunity to acquire no fewer than two works by the only known Swedish female cubist. An untitled work from 1917 with provenance from the artist's family and the work "Flowers" from 1915, a cubist still life that was included in the 1917 exhibition and also exhibited at Artipelag in 2020 at the exhibition "Signature Woman".