Enno Hallek

“Enno Hallek is one of our foremost and most exuberant artists. He is an individual and unconventional realist. Poetic, humorous, yet also serious and penetrating, he interprets reality—often through dual perspectives—in works of art that are a blend of painting and sculpture.”

Thus begins the foreword by Marianne Nanne-Bråhammar, then director of Lunds konsthall, in the 1986 exhibition catalogue. The quote captures the essence of Hallek’s highly personal visual world, where naturalism and abstraction are blended in a seemingly spontaneous and imaginative manner.

Hallek passed away in December last year, aged 94. He was born in Estonia in 1931 and, at the age of twelve, travelled by boat across the Baltic Sea with his family. Estonian folk art, with its wood carvings and colourful decorations, left its mark on his art. So too did his childhood environment in the fishing community of Blekinge.

Enno Hallek found his artistic style as early as the 1960s, a form of pop art without its established focus on popular culture and consumerism. Among his recurring themes are sunsets, fish, mirrors and oars. He explored three-dimensionality in both sculpture and painting. Several of his works are portable, so that one can carry the most beautiful sunset or a fish sculpture with them wherever they may travel. Hallek has brightened up many people’s everyday lives over the years, not least through his many public artworks, which have adorned, among other places, the Stadion underground station since 1973, the Bergshamra housing estate in Solna and Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital.