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, from 1950 to his death in 1981, 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.

Bærtlings art requires that we can understand with the eyes and see with the intellect. It makes visible concepts like 'force', 'movement', 'tension', 'energy', 'struggle'..... What you see is a continually gambit of oppsites, and these opposites create a tremendous dynamic that at superficial consideration might seem disharmonious. But here there are a harmony of higher order, obvious to the one who gives himself time to contemplate what happens outside the markings (painted on canvas or cut in steel). The disharmony is only a starting point for the physically present of these objects. Let the shape act. Observe where it leads. By extension the opposites reaches balance - this 'either - or' is ''both - and'. The disharmony becomes a confirmation of the diversity of opportunities. A great harmony 'after all'.

Gunnar Berefelt 1933 - 2016

Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the History of Art at the University of Stockholm

"Invisible wealth is to be found in open form.