Öyvind Fahlström

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner

Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art, Biennale de Paris '59-'73, 1978

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality of the collaged elements is warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. All collaged elements are stable. There are a number of artist's pinholes scattered in places, notably towards the edges. There is evidence light wear and handling to the outer edges, with a few associated hairline cracks and tiny specks of loss. Extremely close inspection reveals a few very thin and unobtrusive cracks in isolated places elsewhere. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Öyvind Fahlström was simultaneously painter, poet, playwright, composer, film-maker, performance artist and polemicist. He was born in Brazil, adopted Swedish citizenship, and spent his working life between New York, Paris and Rome. In short, and despite an eclectic list of related artists, his work defies contextualisation. However, if the form of his creative output varied hugely, the strength of his poetic voice and the endurance of his political integrity did not. Fahlström’s work was always strikingly unique and dense with content, but above all, it had a purpose: not to woo the international intelligentsia with attractive imagery, but “to create a fusion of insight and pleasure…to formulate the terrifying shortness of life and the terrible shortcomings in a world where we struggle to experience and to create happiness” (Öyvind Fahlström, Texts and Manifestoes by Torsten Ekbom, Robert Rauschenberg, and Oyvind Fahlström, New York, 1967, n.p.).

Untitled and Tire Lire are prime examples of the artist’s formative style which he explored while living between Stockholm, Paris and Rome in the 1940s and 1950s. In keeping with the rest of this phase, they are dark and introspective with elaborate compositions and cartoon-like illegible forms. In the spidery hatchings of Untitled we can see the influence of Wassily Kandinsky’s linear abstractions. Meanwhile the swirling curvilinear articulations of Tire Lire belie Fahlström’s admiration for Robert Rauschenberg, a close friend and acknowledged influence. However, and despite these aesthetic references, these dense meditative works do not align themselves with any narrative or tangible subject matter. Although their graphic forms so often appear to approach the figurative, they remain shrouded in abstraction.