Gerhard Nordström was originally a traditional landscape painter from Skåne, like Ola Billgren. Unlike the academic Billgren, Nordström is deeply rooted in the soil of Österlen and you can almost smell the earth from his paintings. His suite “Summer 1970”, shown at Galleri Doktor Glas in 1972, contained some of the most important works in contemporary Swedish art history. Here Nordström lets the splendid idyll of Österlen meet the threat from outside in the form of scenes from the massacre in the Vietnamese village of Song My. A brutal awakening for many Swedes.
Nordström's major leitmotifs in his paintings are the earth, life, death, the beauty of nature, and human ignorance and vulnerability. His paintings have an epic power, with a stunningly pleasurable walk in the splendor of colorism. It is a rare feat to paint the beauty of nature freed from banality, but this is something Nordström masters with great precision.