Eddie Figge

Eddie Figge (1904-2003) was a celebrated cabaret star in Paris in the 1930s when she was convinced by a friend to begin art school at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She went on to study for the Swedish painter Otte Sköld in Stockholm. Popular recognition of Figge’s artistic work only came 30 years later when she was discovered by the art critic and writer Ulf Linde. Her final breakthrough came in 1961 with the exhibition at Galerie Blanche in Stockholm initiated by Linde. In the postwar period, Informalism emerged as a branch of Abstract Expressionism. Informal painting sought to move away from the formal compositional rules of tradition, with the subject matter instead consisting of the experience evoked in the viewer by the work.

Eddie Figge and her then-husband Rune Jansson are often associated with this artistic movement, which strongly influenced the couple during their travels throughout France and Southern Europe in the 1950s. During the 1960s, Figge’s painting took a new direction as she became deeply interested in the decade’s escalating exploration of space. The so-called “Space Race” gave rise to ideas that occupied Figge at the time. Her thoughts centered on humanity’s ability to take on the challenge of conquering the unknown. These philosophical ideas came to shape her painting for the following two decades, and Figge began working more with compositions characterized by fluid spatiality and two-dimensionality. In paintings that address the theme of space in various ways, sheets of metal came to play an increasingly important role. In 1992, Figge became the first living female artist to exhibit at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.