OLA BILLGREN. “Meadow by the sea”.
Description
Oil on canvas, 73,5 x 99 cm. Signed and dated on verso Ola Billgren -96.
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly by the artist the same year the work was painted.
Ola Billgren is one of our foremost contemporary artists. He broke through in the 1960s as a representative of the so-called neo-realism. With photorealistic sharpness, he depicted everyday environments and scenes. During his career he came to investigate and develop his painterly language and worked with a variety of expressions and styles. The basis, however, was always the photograph and a study of how the photograph could be used for a painting in the time.
During the 90s, Ola Billgren worked on a series of paintings in saturated cadmium red denominations. The color is striking, enveloping and warm, verging on aggressive. The colour herb embeds the motifs, sometimes beyond recognition, and lays down as an embracing membrane. As in previous paintings by Billgren, these works are executed with photographs as models. But where in his early work he portrays the image with razor-sharp sharpness, the motifs in this series are dissolute and diffuse. The picture has been painted up with a brush, then a metal straight has been drawn over the canvas and the wet paint. The subject is anathema but is perceived as veiled and distant. The works require the focus and concentration of the viewer.
Douglas Feuk writes in the great biography “Ola Billgren, Måleri”: “On the one hand, the red gives a special aura, a kind of enamored shimmer to the aspects of human life that the images highlight (and which are of the well-known Billgrenske kind - an interior, a street scene, a woman's face). On the other hand, the painterly technique lends an often slightly ghostly apparition to the subject, which can make it not only resemble a flaming past, but also a sorrowful premonition of the great future oblivion.”
The work “Meadow by the Sea” depicts a landscape, the silhouette of a tree in the foreground and the light of the sun vaguely penetrating the red veils. You get the feeling that the sea is still. The red tones draw little by little towards blood red, which gives the work depth and a suggestive character. As in the rest of Billgren's red paintings, this work bears a duality. The title and the supposed motif have an almost romantic light on them. The red color can be read as warm and enveloping. At the same time, the color is also in some sense aggressive and the resolution of the subject is somewhat threatening. The work evokes an experience of intimate closeness while creating distance and absence. It is precisely this duality that is central to reading Billgren's painting of the 90s and the painting “Meadow by the Sea” is an excellent example of this.Show more
Condition
If you have any questions, please contact johanna.malm@auktionsverket.se.
Resale right
Yes
Artist/designer
Ola Billgren (1940–2001)
View it on
Sale price
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
Description
Oil on canvas, 73,5 x 99 cm. Signed and dated on verso Ola Billgren -96.
PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly by the artist the same year the work was painted.
Ola Billgren is one of our foremost contemporary artists. He broke through in the 1960s as a representative of the so-called neo-realism. With photorealistic sharpness, he depicted everyday environments and scenes. During his career he came to investigate and develop his painterly language and worked with a variety of expressions and styles. The basis, however, was always the photograph and a study of how the photograph could be used for a painting in the time.
During the 90s, Ola Billgren worked on a series of paintings in saturated cadmium red denominations. The color is striking, enveloping and warm, verging on aggressive. The colour herb embeds the motifs, sometimes beyond recognition, and lays down as an embracing membrane. As in previous paintings by Billgren, these works are executed with photographs as models. But where in his early work he portrays the image with razor-sharp sharpness, the motifs in this series are dissolute and diffuse. The picture has been painted up with a brush, then a metal straight has been drawn over the canvas and the wet paint. The subject is anathema but is perceived as veiled and distant. The works require the focus and concentration of the viewer.
Douglas Feuk writes in the great biography “Ola Billgren, Måleri”: “On the one hand, the red gives a special aura, a kind of enamored shimmer to the aspects of human life that the images highlight (and which are of the well-known Billgrenske kind - an interior, a street scene, a woman's face). On the other hand, the painterly technique lends an often slightly ghostly apparition to the subject, which can make it not only resemble a flaming past, but also a sorrowful premonition of the great future oblivion.”
The work “Meadow by the Sea” depicts a landscape, the silhouette of a tree in the foreground and the light of the sun vaguely penetrating the red veils. You get the feeling that the sea is still. The red tones draw little by little towards blood red, which gives the work depth and a suggestive character. As in the rest of Billgren's red paintings, this work bears a duality. The title and the supposed motif have an almost romantic light on them. The red color can be read as warm and enveloping. At the same time, the color is also in some sense aggressive and the resolution of the subject is somewhat threatening. The work evokes an experience of intimate closeness while creating distance and absence. It is precisely this duality that is central to reading Billgren's painting of the 90s and the painting “Meadow by the Sea” is an excellent example of this.Show more
Condition
If you have any questions, please contact johanna.malm@auktionsverket.se.
Resale right
Yes
Artist/designer
Ola Billgren (1940–2001)
Sale price
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
