Modern Art & Design presents Gösta Adrian-Nilsson

Erik Olson, "Korsfästelse II"

Bukowskis presents the work "Korsfästelse II" by Erik Olson at the upcoming auction Modern Art & Design – the leading auction for modern art and design in the Nordics.

Erik Olson was born right into the century of the modern era. Industrialism, socialism, and modernism were some of the movements that were shaping a different society from the one experienced by his parents' generation. Despite growing up in a working-class home, Erik – and his brother Axel as well– realised early on that they wanted to become artists. Together with their cousin Waldemar Lorentzon, the three formed the artist group Gnistan in 1915.

A pivotal event for the three young artists occurred in 1919, when Gnistan was noticed at an amateur exhibition in Halmstad by engineer Egon Östlund, who introduced them to his protégé Gösta Adrian-Nilsson. Known as GAN, he was already established internationally and became the one who guided the young Halmstad artists toward European avant-gardism. It was also GAN who provided their gateway to Léger’s Académie Moderne in Paris, which Erik Olson travelled to with Waldemar Lorentzon in early 1924. The two cousins managed to rent a flat at 86, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, right in the heart of the city, becoming neighbours with both GAN and Grünewald. On the ground floor was Léger’s academy, which now welcomed Erik and Waldemar as two of its new students.

Erik Olson also regularly exhibited with Otto G. Carlsund and Christian Berg in Paris. In November 1928, the trio exhibited in Gothenburg together with GAN. Art historian and GAN expert Jan Torsten Ahlstrand wrote the following about the exhibition in SDS in 1986: “It was no coincidence that GAN chose Christian Berg, Otto G. Carlsund, and Erik Olson as co-exhibitors at Gothenburg’s Konsthall in 1928 – the leading figures in Swedish avant-garde art at the time.”

In the auction piece "Korsfästelse", Erik Olson plays with so-called impossible figures. Through shifts in the various surface planes, he evokes a sense of depth while maintaining the flatness of the surface. The shapes and figures in the painting are constantly changing places, so that one simultaneously experiences both spatial depth and architectural flatness.

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