Barbro Östlihn – among the facades of Manhattan
Contemporary Art & Design presents
Barbro Östlihn, ”299 Grand St. NYC.”
Today, Barbro Östlihn is considered one of Sweden’s most important artists and just this year, she was in the news with a major retrospective exhibition of her work at Göteborgs konstmuseum. However, her career was always more international than Swedish. During Östlihn’s lifetime, her work was not particularly noticed in her country of birth, despite her having had solo shows at several of the most important contemporary art galleries in New York and Paris. Fortunately, in later years, her paintings have begun to be more and more praised and appreciated in Sweden too.
› Barbro Östlihn, photgraph from Allhems Svenskt konstnärslexikon.
In November 1963, Östlihn had a solo exhibition at Cordier & Ekstrom, the New York branch of Öyvind Fahlström’s Paris gallerist Daniel Cordier. Here she showed paintings executed between 1961 and ‘63, exhibiting for the first time her facade paintings. The exhibition received much attention and was written about in the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. During this exhibition and those that followed, Östlihn was often given positive feedback by other artists. Among those who bought her work were, for example, Arman and Roy Lichtenstein. The artist and critic Donald Judd were fascinated by her paintings, and in the 1964 issue of Art International, Barbara Rose compared her to the artist Agnes Martin.
The painting in the auction, 299 Grand Street, was exhibited at a group show at Cordier & Ekstrom in 1964. Since then, it has been a part of gallery owner Arne H Ekström’s private collection, as well as belonging to Björn Springfeldt, director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm between 1989-1996.
To be sold at Contemporary Art & Design
Viewing October 21st – 25th, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Auction Live October 26th, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm