Denise Grünstein

For more than four decades, Denise Grünstein (1950-2023) was one of our most internationally recognised photographers. Born in Helsinki, she was active in Sweden throughout her life. In the 1980s, Denise Grünstein became known for her portraits of cultural figures for magazines such as Elle and Månadsjournalen. She started styling her subjects to bring out other sides of the celebrities, as a kind of artistic dimension to the classic commissioned portrait. Her skill earned her so many commissions that she eventually grew tired of faces and decided to take a different photographic route. Her work often shows landscapes with women in different positions and situations, often hidden or facing away from the camera. It was the composition that came first for Grünstein, to test an idea and see if it held up aesthetically; photography became something necessary to immortalise the composition. Grünstein favoured natural light and is known for her soft, gentle images. In her work on the iconic 'Figure Out' series from 2009, she challenged herself. The series refers to an art-historically charged landscape, the sea and the beaches of Skagen, motifs that have historically appeared in the works of many of the most well-known Scandinavian male painters. In Figure Out's surrealist staging, as in many of her other projects, Grünstein collaborated with performance artist Marta Oldenburg.

Grünstein's other projects include 'Malplacé', 'Jaisana' and 'Figure in Landscape'. In early 2014, she was given the opportunity to do an art project at the Nationalmuseum, as the museum building had been emptied of both art and office furniture for the renovation. The result was the image suite '1866', which refers to the year the museum was inaugurated. The empty museum rooms served as a backdrop to her dreamy world of images, the motifs are timeless, it is impossible to say with certainty whether they belong to the past, present or future.

In October 2023, a memorial exhibition entitled 'Eftermäle' (Legacy) was held at the Artipelag art gallery in an attempt to portray what Grünstein meant to Swedish photography. The exhibition illustrated her career from the 1980s to her last major artistic project 'Nymphaeas' in 2021.

The artistry of Denise Grünstein will live on for a long time to come through the works in the collections of Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, KIASMA in Helsinki and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo.