His home and kitchen in Aspudden, Stockholm, became a meeting place for young artists from both Sweden and the continent, and he became one of the many exiled artists and writers who enriched Swedish cultural life from the 1940s onwards.
He had a significant impact on Swedish post-war art. At the time, art in Sweden was characterised by restraint and dominated by the strict structural rules of Cubism, alongside the academics’ and traditionalists’ emphasis on control, moderation, and composure. Into this artistic climate, Herdies arrived as something exotic, anarchistic, and romantic. He himself was strongly influenced by the new abstract art scene in Paris, which he encountered after the war when he travelled there to produce art programmes for Swedish Radio. It was also in Paris that he made his debut as an artist in 1955, at the Colette Allendy gallery.
Herdies’ “sign painting” had a major influence on Öyvind Fahlström. Around Fahlström, in the years around 1960, an international circle of artists, musicians, and writers gathered – Herdies among them. These were fruitful years for the Stockholm art scene, which saw the opening of Moderna Museet and the introduction of a new kind of art. Stockholm opened itself to the wider world and, for a few years, became one of Europe’s art metropolises. Key to this development were several artists and writers who had come to Stockholm from various parts of the world – besides Olivier Herdies, others included the poet Ilmar Laaban, the photographer and poet Lutfi Özkök, and the author Peter Weiss.
Herdies passed away in 1993 in Stockholm. In 2022, Thomas Millroth published the monograph "Olivier Herdies – Pioneer and Mentor", in which many of the auctioned drawings are illustrated. During the spring of 2024, a number of the drawings were also exhibited at the exhibition "Olivier Herdies – Living His Own Life" at the Museum of Drawings in Laholm.
Viewing: September 15–19, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Open: 11 AM – 5 PM
