Amos Anderson Art Museum
1.2.-16.3.2008




Birger Carlstedt (1907-1975) is known as a painter of abstract-geometric canvases. He employed an abstract idiom in his paintings in 1929 but reverted after three years to figurative painting, to which he would remain loyal until 1950 when he finally moved on to pure abstraction.

Amos Anderson Art Museum received a substantial collection of paintings as a testamentary donation after the deaths of the artist and his wife. The Birger Carlstedt centenary exhibition displays both familiar paintings from earlier exhibitions and surprises from the 30s and 40s.

Birger Carlstedt searched fervently for an artistic identity.  Lacking the patience to train professionally at an art school, Carlstedt began to educate himself drawing influences from the works of other artists, magazines and books as well as from trips abroad to France and Germany in order to "express his dreams" and to deconstruct his imagination. His subject matter included imaginary female figures, still lifes and group portraits. Portrayals are expressive and sometimes surrealist depictions. In the 1930s, Surrealism was considered the most subversive art movement on the Finnish art scene and Carlstedt always wanted to be modern.

In the winter of 1938, Birger Carlstedt visited Paris and North Africa. He penned a series of articles about French artists and travel accounts from North Africa. These trips had an impact on Carlstedt's work. Painterly realism dominated French art, whereas North Africa provided a hefty dose of visual exoticism.

In the late 1930s, Carlstedt started to paint group portraits, in which the characters grew and became simplified.  The impetus for moving towards monumental painting came from Maurice Assel. Carlstedt's monumental paintings can be divided into two categories: the grey and ascetic kind, fit for the melancholic mood in times of war, and the colourful atmosphere of African life. Circus was another unusual theme.

The status of the still life in Carlstedt's oeuvre strengthens in the mid-1940s. The finest paintings are reminiscent of the lucid, metaphysical surrealism of Giorgio de Chirico's works, in which every object placed in an open space is endowed with powerful symbolic value. The composition and space of each work begins to refer to a clear-cut concrete art, interspersed with the cubist Cathedrale Englôutie (1949) and Moroccan Woman (1950), in which traits typical of Carlstedt's concrete art - organic shapes and a strong circular movement - is already evident.

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Amos Anderson Art Museum
Yrjönkatu 27
00100 Helsinki
Finland
TEL : +358 (0)9 6844 460
museum@amosanderson.fi
www.amosanderson.fi/