Erik Olson

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Erik Olson (born May 9, 1901 in Halmstad , Halland, † February 15, 1986 ) was a Swedish painter .

life and work

Together with his older brother Axel (1899–1986), Erik Olson developed an interest in painting and drawing at an early age. As early as 1919, he had his first exhibition in Halmstad together with his brother and cousin Waldemar Lorentzon. At the beginning of 1924 he traveled with Lorentzon to Paris , where he lived from 1924 to 1935, interrupted by a trip to Italy and the Swedish military service. He studied at the Academie Modern with Amédée Ozenfant from 1924 to 1927 and was a student of Fernand Léger . In 1929 Olson founded the Halmstadsgruppen artists' association with his brother Axel, Waldemar Lorentzon, Stellan Möller and others . A few years later he joined concreteist circles in Paris and painted geometric compositions. He painted his first surrealist works in the late 1930s . In 1931 he joined the group Abstraction-Création (Abstraction-Creation), but he turned more and more to surrealism, which reached its heyday in Paris through Salvador Dalí . Olson conveyed this trend to the other members of the Halmstad group. In 1934 he became a member of the surrealist group Gravitation in Paris. Dreams and visionary experiences accompanied Erik Olson throughout his life and he attached great importance to the artistic design of these visions, which he combined with Nordic traditions.

In 1935 he moved from Paris to Copenhagen and joined the Danish Surrealists. The following year he moved to the fishing village of Taarbæk outside Copenhagen and took part in international surrealist exhibitions in London in 1936 and 1937. In the early 1940s he began to experiment with painting in the post-impressionist style. In 1944 he moves back to Halmstad.

In 1959, Erik Olson found his way to the Catholic Church and converted . The last years of his life were filled with church missions. Many church windows and altarpieces in Sweden come from his workshop. In 1959 he created four windows for the newly consecrated St Clemens Church in Halmstad . He designed other church windows for Laholm . In 1977 he painted a triptych for the Vatican Museums in Rome.

Exhibitions

  • 1983: with Axel Olson: Ysads Konstmuseum, Sweden
  • Mjellby Konstmuseum, Halmstad (permanent exhibition with the Halmstad groups)
  • 2011/2012: Waldemarsudde (Stockholm)

literature

  • Viveka Bosson (Ed.): Erik Olson, en sökares vandring. Stiftelsen Erik-Olson-Mjelby, Halmstad 2001, ISBN 91-631-0861-5 .
  • Folke Holmér: Halmstad groups. Waldemar Lorentzon, Axel Olson, Erik Olson, Esaias Thorén, Sven Jonson, Stellan Mörner. Rabén & Sjögren, Stockholm 1947.
  • Otto Gelsted: Gelsteds kunstner-leksikon: med 1100 biografier af danske billedhuggere, painting, graphic arts and decorative arts fra 1900–1942. Jensen, Copenhagen 1942.
  • H. Slyngbom: Dansk kunstner-leksikon. Dansk Historisk Håndbogsforlag, Copenhagen 1988 (unchanged reprint of the Lexicon of Fine Artists from Four Centuries. 1947).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Svenskt biografiskt lexikon, Volume 28, Part 1, 1992, p. 272
  2. ↑ Biography on the website of the Mjellby Konstmuseum (English)
personal data
SURNAME Olson, Erik
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Halmstad , Halland
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1986