Ola Billgren

Purchased by the present owner from the artist in 1991

Lyngby, Sophienholm and Göteborg, 141:au Eriksbergsvarvet, Blind Date, 1995 (an exhibition of works by Ola Bilgren, Anette Harboe Flensburg, Preben Fjederholt, Peter Martensen, Kehnet Nielsen)

Douglas Feuk and Anne Ring Petersen, Ola Billgren. Måleri, Stockholm, 2000, p. 244, catalogued; p. 245, illustrated

Original canvas. There are no signs of retouching visible under ultraviolet light, and the work is in very good original condition and ready to hang. Held in a simple, narrow, white-painted wood frame.
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'It has been said about the blind that he shall love the invisible'  (verse by the poet Gunnar Ekelöf chosen by Ola Billgren to describe his painting in the Blind Date exhibition).

Kust represents an important new departure in Ola Billgren's work, in which he challenges the very 'thresholds of visibility' (Douglas Feuk and Anne Ring Petersen, Ola Billgren. Maleri, Stockholm, 2000, p. 346). Having moved from abstract painting in the 1960s to photorealism and the exploration of pure colour in the '70s and '80s, in Kust the starting point is a figurative subject (a coastline in Spain) which is then deliberately broken down, by means of thick dabs of paint and subtle tonalities, into an essence of texture and amorphous light.

In Billgren's words, Kust anticipates 'sublime maculature' (Douglas Feuk and Anne Ring Petersen, Ola Billgren. Måleri, Stockholm, 2000, p. 346), in which the motif is consciously deconstructed to achieve a purity of expression akin to the sensibility of a blind person (as suggested by the verse Billgren chose to encapsulate the meaning of the present work). Limits are not sharply defined, while tonal values are what differentiate space. The dissolved traces of recognisable forms melt into nevertheless beautiful fields of colour while the vigorously worked surface takes on qualities that are as tactile as they are visible.  

Ola Billgren was born in Copenhagen in January, 1940. His parents, Hans Billgren and Grete Lützhöft-Billgren were both painters. He received his training at home. At the age of thirteen he began to exhibit watercolours and ink drawings locally in Österlen in Skåne, where his family had moved in 1940. Settling in Lund in 1960, he participated in a number of group shows. Experimental by nature, his subsequent oeuvre has shown him to be enormously versatile, and embracing diverse styles.

Early in 1963 he deserted abstract painting and embarked on a photorealist course under the influence of the current literary and cinematographic idioms. His breakthrough followed shortly thereafter with an exhibition at Galleri Karlsson in Stockholm in 1966. During the seventies, colour became the dominant element in his work. Two exhibitions at Galleri Engström in Stockholm in 1982 and 1983 testify to the result of this process, in which collage, among other art forms, played an important role.

In addition to painting, Billgren engaged in the fields of graphics, collage, watercolour, photography, film, set design and art journalism. He is represented in museums including the Musée National d'art Moderne Centre George Pompidou in Paris, the Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Lübeck, Germany, the Louisiana Museum for Contemporary Art in Copenhagen, and the Moderna Museet and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.