Baertling Foundation

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, 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

Olle Bærtling 1911 - 1981
photo László Bogardy

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 h 525 cm Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris

Irgur, 1958
Oil on canvas, 195 x 97cm

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

Stipendiater - 2020 - Nina Ölund Noreskär

Nina Ölund Noreskär

Nina Ölund Noreskär får Bærtlingstipendiet 2020 för sina monumentala målningar. I likhet med Bærtling söker hon sig utanför ramarna på ett vis som upplöser traditionella begreppsligheter som ”måleri” ”skulptur" och även ”installation”. Hennes konst intar istället en rumslig position där verkens kroppar står i ständig dialog med såväl betraktare som varandra. Genom att arbeta med okonventionella material och föreställningar om hur måleri kan presenteras, ställer hon sig också i den konstruktivistiska konstens traditionen, vilken Bærtling också såg som sitt och stiftelsens ändamål att utveckla.

Specialpris - Nils Kölare - Cajsa Holmstrand - Lars Englund

Mellan åren 2006 och 2016 delade stiftelsen ut ett specialpris - vart femte år - till en konstnär som under lång tid verkat i den konstruktiva traditionen.
2006-Nils Kölare, 2011-Cajsa Holmstrand, 2016-Lars Englund

Detta pris har upphört med anledning av att prissumman för det årliga stipendiet har höjts.