Olle Baertling
Exhibitions
Publications
Also Solo-shows at Galerie Bel'Art: 1981 and 1985.
Baertling was born in Halmstad on the Swedish west-coast in 1911 and moved to Stockholm in 1928, where he worked in a bank and painted in his spare time. As an amateur artist his work was figurative and Nordic expressionist in style before he was influenced by the work of Matisse and van Gogh. Baertling married in 1939 and spent 1947 in England, where his studies of the city became increasingly abstract. His formal training took place in Paris the following year where his studied under André Lhote and Fernand Léger, and he held his first solo exhibition in Stockholm in 1949.
From 1950 onwards his work was purely abstract. Particularly important to him was the work of French artist Auguste Herbin, whose concrete paintings of the 1940s adhered to strict principles of two-dimensionality and simple geometry. Baertling created clean areas of pure colour bordered by black diagonal lines, as well as experimenting with circles and after-images. From 1953 he used acute angles to create open forms which extend from the edges of the canvas into the surrounding space.
It was around 1955 that he started to experiment with sculpture, translating his black lines into steel rods. The artist came to regard sculpture and painting as invisible forms, both aiming to create compositions in space. An artist and designer of international reputation, Baertling also worked with architects such as David Helldén on innovative building designs and held exhibitions worldwide.
Baertling died in Stockholm in 1981.
Represented:
Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Tate Gallery, London
Galleria Nazionale d,Arte Moderna, Rom/Rome
Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts, Wien/Vienna
Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bryssel/Brussels
Museo de Arte Modemo, Mexico City
Narodni Galerie, Prag/Prague
Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum, Budapest
Kunstmuseum Basel
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Konstmuseet i Ateneum, Helsingfors/Helsinki
Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo
Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf
Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Museum der Stadt Duisburg
Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen
Skulpturenmuseum, Marl
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian institution, Washington
Washington Galleri of Modern Art
Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo
Museo Internacional de la Resistencia Salvador Allende
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Providence, Rhode Island
Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Cambridge
Rose Art Museum, grandels University, Waltham, Massachusetts
Columbia University, New York
New York University
State University of New York
Cornell University, New York
McCrory Corporation, New York
University of Cambridge, England
Stockholms universitet
Stockholms kommun
Arkiv för dekorativ konst/Museum of Monumental Art, Lund
Lunds universitet
Uppsala universitet
Uppsala kommun
University of California, Berkeley
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Milwaukee Art Center, Wisconsin
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio
Indiana University, Bloomington
Grinnell College, Iowa
Hartwick College, Oneonta, New York
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Miami, Florida
University of Tel Aviv
Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Liège
Svenska institutet i Rom/lstituto Svedese, Rome
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
Institut Tessin, Paris
Göteborgs Konstmuseum
Malmö Museum
Norrköpings konstmuseum
Västerås konstmuseum
Örebro läns museum
Internationella privatsamlingar/international private collections
Malmö konsthall, Malmö
Stockholm School of Economics
Kunsthalle zu Kiel
Rasjö Collection, Sweden