The Artist Sven Erixson

The Swedish season continues...



Sweden Today
Algard, Goran - Rommell, Roland
Gebers
Stockholm 1965



Caption:
'The artist Sven Erixson in his Stockholm studion.
"The X" is one of the figures in modern Swedish painting who reveal a lively temperament. Using sparkling colours, spontaneously and without inhibiitions, he creates works that are very much his own. The freedom with which he expresses himself and, equally his strong artistic ambition, are best caught in his own words: "Art that cannot express itself is nonsense, and art that can only express itself is equally nonsense."

The Cursive Scandinavian Salve

Visited the London Art Book Fair at Whitechapel gallery yesterday. I particularly liked a series of reprints of Great Bear Pamphlets. This is a fine example:

The Cursive Scandinavian Salve
Af Klintberb, Bengt
Something Else Press (original publisher)
New York 1967





Bengt af Klintberg was a Swedish poet and folklorist who conducted Happenings such as Orangermusik 1963 - a piece for buckets, wooden boxes, lettuce and carbonic-acid snow tube (no idea what one of them is!) and the following:


Lettuce Music (for Slet Hanson)
(Premiered march 28th, 1963, in Oslo by Sten Hanson and the author.)

The piece requires two performers, a head of lettuce on a music rack, a whistle and a small charge of explosive.
Short signals on whilstle.
Head of lettuce explodes:
A green rain. Long signal on whistle.

Pamphlet also includes Swedish folklore riddles:

The Bear
Blueberryeater
and lingberryshitter,
God's word's flouter
and poor-man's old-cow-slaughter.

The Nettles
Ten gray hags
stand outside the door.
If you lift their skirts
you get fire on your hands.


Reprinted by Primary Information
Interesting publisher - reprints of many 60s event manifestos and plans for Happenings
Check them out at http://primaryinformation.org

More Swedish Style

Swedish Embroidery
ed. Fisher, Eivor
B. T. Batsford
London 1953

Swedish Style

Some more photos from Slet for Hepworth, Walthamstow Town Hall.

You can just see several of the five sculptures carved for the rear of the building that represent Fellowship, Motherhood, Education, Work and Recreation.

Pevsner wrote about the town hall '...stone-faced and in the Swedish style of c.1925 which became so popular in England amongst those who were not satisfied to be imitatively Neo-Georgian nor wanted to go modern in earnest.'















Thank you to Sam Brown for photography.

Fellowship is Life

A few photos from two days of Slet for Hepworth activities in Chestnut Fields to celebrate the architecture of Walthamstow town hall. The carved text 'Fellowship is life and the lack of fellowship is death' is on the Assembly Hall next to the town hall.











Some more photos and video clip to follow shortly...