In early 1924, Erik Olson and his cousin Waldemar Lorentzon arrived in Paris. They became part of the very first group of students at what was then the most modern art school on the European continent: Fernand Léger’s Académie Moderne in Montparnasse. In Paris, Erik spent time with his close friend, the artist Otto Carlsund. Together, they visited Amédée Ozenfant’s ultramodern studio, designed by the architect Le Corbusier. The visit made a profound impression on Erik, who wrote home to Egon Östlund: “A studio which, in terms of architectural purity and clarity, has no equal.” Erik found the same clarity in Ozenfant’s painting, which he described as “…extremely simplified forms that interweave and separate, accompanied by a purely musical colour…”.

Later, Erik also visited Piet Mondrian’s studio and marvelled at the fact that not only were his paintings rectilinear, but every object and tool in the studio was arranged at perfect right angles. Even the artist himself stood with one arm bent at a right angle.

Viveca Bosson recounts the correspondence between Erik Olson and Egon Östlund: “It was after his visit to Mondrian in May 1927 that Erik began his first Neoplastic experiments. On 20 May, he wrote to Egon Östlund: ‘I have abandoned modelling, which is itself an optical illusion, and now seek to achieve a purely plastic depth through the different displacements of planes in varying tonalities.’ On 2 June 1927, Erik wrote: ‘The last remnants of the Léger principle are surely being eliminated, and I am striving with all my might to develop my own system. Starting from a representational element, I believe I can achieve an entirely abstract effect.’” (En sökares vandring, Part II, 2001, p. 16.)

In the painting Ritare (Draftsman), offered in this auction and dated 1928, the lines are straight, the colours clear, and the various surfaces puristically flat, without any play of shadows. The individual elements interact to form a unified whole in an almost musical composition. The painting encapsulates Erik Olson’s distinctive artistic style, rooted in the spirit of the times in late-1920s Paris: the tension between representation and the concrete, the development of Post-Cubism, the search for new artistic paths, and the artist’s departure from Léger’s modelled forms.

Provenance
Sven Uno Forthmeiier was an architect who designed the extension to Hotel Tylösand in 1927, with Axel Olson commissioned to create its decorative scheme. He also designed the architecture for the 1929 Exhibition of Art, Crafts and Industry in Halmstad. The exhibition’s modern art section featured several artists who, shortly afterwards, would go on to form the Halmstad Group.

Davis Allen was an American interior designer who studied at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm during the 1930s. From 1959 onwards, he was involved in selecting and assembling art collections for major corporate clients and private patrons, working in collaboration with figures including Alfred H. Barr Jr.