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 of the last three decades 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.
 
Gunnar Berefelt 
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Stockholm
Olle Bærtling
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 - 2015 - Jesper Nyrén

Jesper Nyrén

Jesper Nyrén får Bærtlingstipendiet 2015 för sina många spännande arbeten där måleriet tar en tydligt rumslig form och därmed bygger vidare på hur Olle Bærtling arbetade med sitt måleri både som stafflikonst och som rumslighet. Bærtling beskrev sitt konstnärskap som en helhet, där de olika uttrycken var ”samma andas barn” som det står i hans deklaration  ”Prolog ur ett manifest till öppen form”. Detta är en beskrivning som väl passar in på de sätt Nyrén går från det lilla till det stora med bibehållen konstnärlig kvalitet och integritet.

 Specialpris - 2011 - Cajsa Holmstrand

Cajsa Holmstrand receive the special prize for a artistic ability in the spirit of Olle Baertling.
Her art is a beautiful and pleasurable consequence of the efforts to artistically portray one of the oldest and most well-known formulas in the geometry, Pythagoras theorem or Fermat's enigma.