The humanist who created his own universe

Modern Art & Design presenterar

Olle Bærtling, "Mithra""

It has always been difficult to simply place Olle Bærtling's body of work in a specific -ism or artist grouping in Swedish art history. He was an independent artist that staked out his own path in both life and in art.

Olle Bærtling felt for a long time that there was resistance to his art, he was "the constantly disputed banker who was trying to paint", in Sweden. Many artists have, of course, experienced resistance when they innovatively and creatively presented something new to the audience, but in Bærtling's case, one can perhaps feel that it was unfair and small-minded since he, unlike many of his contemporary artists, reached far beyond the borders of his home country in his lifetime.

With exhibitions all over the world from the 1950s until his death in 1981, Bærtling places himself on his own internationally known level as a Swede, where one can mention a few others such as Öyvind Fahlström and Claes Oldenburg.

The 1950s were Olle Bærtling's most important decade. During the first years of the 50s, he took longer and longer holidays from his banking job at Skandinaviska Banken and travelled to Paris. There, in the Mecca of art, he came into contact with the new art world at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and sought out artists such as André Lhote, Fernand Léger, Victor Vasarely, Richard Mortensen and Auguste Herbin. The latter was absolutely crucial for his continued development as an artist. Herbin introduced Bærtling to the forward-thinking gallerist Denise René who immediately installed Bærtling in her 'stable' of Constructivists”.

Bærtling abandoned OP-Art, which had been inspiring him for some time, and started creating his own style where triangles and diagonals were the main themes. Once Bærtling swears off the figurative, he begins to "construct" paintings. From basic geometric elements, he created a new visual world of measurement ratios, proportions and synthetic, programmed colour tones. Everything is carried out methodically, the geometric instinct takes over and "the open form" is born. In the concept of "the open form", Bærtling strove to depict space and movement through his geometric shapes that continue outside the surface of the image, everything that was on the image surface is brought out to the edge of the frame and beyond.

In an essay titled “Swedish art after 1945”, the art critic Olle Granath wrote:

“The acquaintance with Auguste Herbin showed Bærtling the way to non-figurative painting, that he would soon give his personal touch with unfinished, triangle-like shapes and powerful, divergent colours. The unfinished triangles, what Bærtling himself called “open form” contributes to the feeling that one never experiences any relationship between fore- and background in the paintings. A relationship that Bærtling views as “Naturalism”.

The central goal for him was to eliminate any possible reference to anything outside the picture itself. The expression of the image only exists in the tension between colours and shapes. The contours and lines in black that separate the fields of colour are not straight as they first appear, but slightly arced to offset the optical expansion and contraction of the colour tones. In this way, he builds up an excruciatingly tense image, which excludes any experience of decoration.”

A very accurate description of Bærtling's work. Olle Bærtling did not want to remake the world. He wanted to bring out dynamic forces that strengthen us as individuals according to our needs and abilities. He has been described as a humanist who created his own universe. Unlike the Modernists of the early 20th century, he did not want to change the world with his art.