Curt Clemens

Despite Curt Clemens' far too short life time, he is represented in important, leading museum collections in Sweden. The Modern Museum's collection contains, for example, as many as 35 works by the artist. In the Moderna Museet's paintings “The Eye in the Mirror” (ref NM 3964) and “The Crossword” (NM 5054), the same woman (Curt Clemens' wife) is portrayed, as in the auction's painting.

Curt Clemens has been called a mood painter and color visionary, as a painter of melancholic emotional states. At its solo exhibition at Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet in 1942, when, among other things, the auction's painting "Girl by a cairn" was exhibited, the gallery feared a great deal of public interest.
Therefore, the day of the inauguration was charged with an entrance fee of 1 krona per visitor. On the following weekdays there was no entrance fee, but on Sunday there was again 1 krona in fee.

Curt Clemens attracted a lot of attention in Sweden's art life during the 1940s. His world of images, like his whole life, moves between heartfelt descriptions of love and deep anxiety. The exhibitions were praised by both audiences and critics. Dagens Nyheter's ambitious art critic Yngve Berg carefully reported from Curt Clemens all exhibitions in Stockholm.

The famous Swedish actor Hasse Ekman and his wife Agneta belonged to the art-loving inhabitants in the 1940s and were both very dedicated collectors of Curt Clemen's paintings.
On June 14, 1940, Dagens Nyheter published a report about the couple:
"Curt Clemens is richly represented in the Ekman collection, which includes no less than 15 Clemens works, and there are also paintings signed by Evert Lundquist, Hilding Linnqvist, Sven Erixson, Olle Olsson Hagalund and many others."
Excerpt from an article in Dagens Nyheter, 14 June 1940