Marie-Louise Ekman lithographs

Marie-Louise Ekman is undoubtedly one of Sweden's most distinctive artists in contemporary art. The consistency of her expression is striking, with a unique language that is unmistakably her own. As a young art student, she broke all the taboos and conventions of being a woman.

Ekman's artistry is characterized by her anarchistic and clear-eyed attack on normality. She has been included in the circle of the influential underground magazine "Puss" and has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Aronowitsch. With his gallery, William Aronovitsch exerted a significant influence on Marie-Louise Ekman. In a sense, the gallery can be said to be a vital part of her artistic education and development. "We had his gallery as a café after a work shift, very nice. There they leafed through his books and catalogs, and I saw Baertling and the paintings in the warehouse. From the very beginning, I was provoked. Non-figurative - I didn't get it! I began to interrogate William: "What do you like about this?" He explained. "What you say is not true," I said. Then I got a catalog, at the time it was really nicely done. I looked at them regularly but did not connect with them and returned. Then one day, I got the experience of the world. One day I felt strongly that I experienced that it was an image of thought activity and could be an image from inside the brain. How a thought emerges and represents something non-figuratively that cannot be captured in any other way than non-figuratively. It was breathtaking. Then I wanted to see more and more and more. I got high. Then it was fun to have them as a kind of room that my figures could move in. Instead of city rooms or rooms in a house, I made a room out of his painting. I was careful to point out in each painting that it was Olle Baertling's picture. All the paintings are there, I haven't made any up. But it's my colors trying to match his, but I haven't measured them. I painted them my way. After that I also did Mondrian and Picasso, but I only had black and white books."

The quote is from a conversation between Marie-Louise Ekman and an employee at Bukowskis from spring 2014.