Bærtlingfoundation

         
In memory of
Olle Bærtling

There is one Swedish artist who has made an entirely original contribution to the art of our time, comparable with the foremost masters of modern art history, and that is Olle Bærtling. It is all too easy to use presumptuous words on a matter like this. And yet, I wish to maintain that Bærtling, with his 'open form' and his 'two-dimensional sculptures', is the only Swede-besides Viking Eggeling, whose achievement came to a stop at its very beginning-who has added something unique to the store of forms available to art. His work of the last three decades has an innovative quality and an international range which may be compared - mutatis mutandis - with the finest achievements of scholarly research. It is not by chance that his works have found a place in many universities around the world.

Gunnar Berefelt
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Stockholm

Olle Bærtling
Olle Bærtling
1911 - 1981




Irgur, 1958
oil on canvas, 195 x 97cm


 
Creator of open form

"Invisible wealth is to be found in open form.
It radiates a compressed concentration of highly-charged power that is transformed with suggestive radiant force into infinite space in strong dynamics and unknown dimensions. Art at its most sublime is a hymn of praise to creation, an invisible but ever-present force.
A sense of the infinite, a flight to an invisible destination.
A positive change of man's inner life, a realization of his world of ideas. An intellectualization, a visualization of the positive source of creative power, a visualization of its ethereal beauty."

Olle Bærtling




Sculpture YAYAO
1971
 

    Drawing for TV tower in Abu Dhabi,
from 1978,
based upon the sculpture YAYAO

 
 
    The scholarship for 2008    
 


Jakob Ojanen
 

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