Mona Lodström

Certain painting can be described in purely musical terms. Occasionally, a shadow or a hint of a motif appears in Mona Lodström’s works: for example, a horizontal blue streak can suggest the tone of the sea. Otherwise, her experiences of nature seem to have been transformed into cosmically elemental visions of pure color on her canvases. Mona Lodström primarily worked as a painter but also engaged in textile art. She studied, among other places, at Otte Sköld’s painting school from 1937 to 1939 and at the Académie Ranson in Paris in 1953. Lodström exhibited frequently both in Sweden and abroad, including at De ungas salong in Stockholm in 1942 and at Lilla Paviljongen and Lorensbergs konstsalong in Gothenburg in 1955. She also participated in the exhibition 9e Réalités Nouvelles in Paris in 1954, which included Swedish artists such as Olle Baertling, Eric Chambert, Inger Ekdahl, and Joy Egnel, as well as international figures like Jean Gorin, Auguste Herbin, Georges Papazoff, and Victor Vasarely, among others.

In Lodström’s paintings, one can see parallels to Hans Hartung, Serge Poliakoff, and Pierre Soulages. Her world is romantic, with small clusters of color playing across imaginary cliff faces in cave-like spatial formations, possessing a suggestive charm. Harry Källström wrote in a review of Lodström’s work:

"There is nothing ingratiating in her abstract paintings, executed in heavy yet well-tuned colors. What do the paintings mean? No one knows, since they are nameless. But if one pauses before them for a moment, one feels as if the melodies of life are resonating within them. At the same time, on a purely psychological level, they speak of broken bars, fractured chains, and fragments of burdensome constructions in thought; yet the light is dissolving the solid element and allowing life’s melody to sound again. A nameless painting can tell more than if it were camouflaged with a carefully measured title." (Harry Källmark, review of the exhibition at Lilla Paviljongen in Dagen, 17 February 1955).