Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd was an important artist not only in Sweden but also on the international art scene during the post-war period. Reuterswärd’s long career spanned nearly seven decades.

He studied under Fernand Léger in Paris in 1951 and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1952 to 1955. He later served as a professor at the Royal Institute of Art from 1965 to 1969 and held a visiting professorship at the Minneapolis College of Art in the United States from 1974 to 1975.

Reuterswärd featured in the extensive exhibition “GEGEBEN SIND – REUTERSWÄRD, FAHLSTRÖM, DUCHAMP” at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover in 2022, which explored the close friendship between Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Öyvind Fahlström and Marcel Duchamp.

The painting “Las Vegas”, offered at this auction and featuring a deep blue background, was executed during the artist’s most interesting period, spanning the late 1950s and early 1960s. Reuterswärd was 28 years old when “Las Vegas” was painted. The following year, in January 1963, he published an advertisement in the New York Herald Tribune that read: “CARL FREDRIK REUTERSWARD Closed for holidays 1963–1972”. This was his way of breaking away, with both seriousness and humour, from an increasingly commercially oriented art climate.

With the exception of Öyvind Fahlström, no Swedish artist has had greater global significance, nor the same international network, as Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd. He associated with many of the leading artists of the period, including Marcel Duchamp, as well as prominent critics and writers such as Susan Sonntag.

In March 1963, Reuterswärd took part in a Fluxus evening under the pseudonym Charlie Lavendel. During the performance, hidden in the darkness, he sprayed lavender oil into the auditorium, causing everyone in the audience to fall asleep. That same year, he auctioned a ten-kilogram pike at Moderna Museet; it was purchased by the artist Lars Hillersberg.

Following the murder of John Lennon in 1980, Reuterswärd created the work for which he is best known today: the sculpture Non-Violence, depicting a revolver with a knot tied in its barrel. The sculpture was originally installed as a memorial in Central Park, but in 1988 it was donated to the United Nations by the Government of Luxembourg. It has stood in front of the UN Headquarters in New York ever since. The work has subsequently been installed in numerous cities around the world and has become an international symbol of peace. One example is located at Hötorget in Stockholm.

Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd is represented in, among others, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kunsthaus Zürich, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Louisiana in Denmark, Ateneum in Finland, Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design in Norway, the Museum of Holography in New York, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Norrköpings konstmuseum, Malmö Museum, Skissernas Museum in Lund, Länsmuseet Gävleborg, Smålands Museum, Postmuseum, Hallands Konstmuseum, Helsingborg Museum, Statens Museum for Kunst, as well as Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In addition, the Sprengel Museum in Hannover holds a large collection of works by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd.