Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen – Works on Paper F558

The current theme auction contains 10 studies by Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen made during his years as a designer at Rörstrands Porslinsfabrik. In 1951, he began his collaboration with Rörstrand and was assigned to produce sketches and models for production. He worked both in Stockholm and at the factory in Lidköping. As a designer at Rörstrand from 1951 to 1952 and again in 1954, Bjerke-Petersen produced unique pieces in chamotte and series in earthenware, with names such as Abstrakta and Fasett.

Online auction 6–15 September 2024
Viewing 10–13 September, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Collection 16–17 September, you can collect your item at Arsenalsgatan 2. 18–19 September the collection will be closed. From Friday, 20 September, you can collect your item at Västberga Allé 3.

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The current theme auction contains 10 studies by Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen made during his years as a designer at Rörstrands Porslinsfabrik. In 1951, he began his collaboration with Rörstrand and was assigned to produce sketches and models for production. He worked both in Stockholm and at the factory in Lidköping. As a designer at Rörstrand from 1951 to 1952 and again in 1954, Bjerke-Petersen produced unique pieces in chamotte and series in earthenware, with names such as Abstrakta and Fasett.

Online auction 6–15 September 2024
Viewing 10–13 September, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Collection 16–17 September, you can collect your item at Arsenalsgatan 2. 18–19 September the collection will be closed. From Friday, 20 September, you can collect your item at Västberga Allé 3.

Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen grew up in a cultural home in Birkeröd. In the 1920s he studied painting and sculpture, and in 1927 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In 1930 he went to the Bauhaus School in Dessau, where he studied under Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. Their influence on the young artist was significant, but a few years later he was completely taken by the surrealist movement, which became a lifelong passion and his way of expressing his art.

In February 1935, Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen married the artist Elsa Thoresen and from 1937 to 1938 they lived in Paris, where they both devoted themselves to Surrealism, initially with an abstract idiom, but later with the psychophotographic form of Surrealism, where a figure or object is reproduced almost photographically, but placed in a context that is unreal, dreamlike and imaginative. In the late 1940s, Bjerke-Petersen's painting changed, a stylistic break occurred, and he returned to abstract, concrete painting. He exhibited at many important Surrealist exhibitions, for example in Copenhagen in 1935, London in 1936, New York in 1936, Paris in 1938 and 1947. In 1944 the artist couple moved to Sweden. Together with Elsa Thoresen, he exhibited at Färg och Form in Stockholm on several occasions and had many solo exhibitions in Swedish museums.

Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen had a broad repertoire: in addition to painting and ceramics, he produced prints and wrote several art theory books and journals. He wrote ‘Surrealism’ in 1934 and ‘Surrealism in the Visual World 1937’, two books on surrealist art based on André Breton's theories, which he presented in 1929 in ‘Le Surrealisme et la peinture’. Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen died in 1957 in Halmstad.