Inger Ekdahl

Alexander Engström

Department of Culture and Aesthetics Degree 15 HE credits Art History Art History - Bachelor´s Course (30 credits) Spring term 2020 Supervisor: Magdalena Holdar Abstract

Inger Ekdahl was a female painter at the center of Swedish Abstract Expressionism in the fifties. This essay investigates how her art was received in Stockholm and Paris. We conclude that although her type of art dominated the avant-garde in Paris during the late fifties, she was too early for the Swedish avant-garde and did not amass enough support to transform it. The analysis used Actor-Network Theory following Latour.

Keywords Inger Ekdahl, Spontaneity, Tachism, Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting.

Acknowledgements The author thanks Magdalena Holdar for excellent advice and Angela Cesarec at Malmö Konsthall for organizing a special tour of their Ekdahl exhibition and providing access to background material.

No figures This is an electronic version without figures, due to potential copyright problems. Contact the author at [email protected] for a copy with figures.

Contents

Introduction ...... 1 Aim and research questions ...... 1 Previous research ...... 1 Theory ...... 2 Method ...... 3 Sources ...... 4 Disposition ...... 4 Grand Tour ...... 5 Italy and France, 1947-1950 ...... 6 Connections home and far away ...... 7 Paris, -1960 ...... 9 Scouting for avant-garde ...... 9 The creation and annihilation of isms ...... 10 Avant-garde that fizzled out ...... 11 Concrete descending ...... 12 Paris ...... 13 Sweden ...... 14 Spontaneity ascending ...... 15 Ekdahl’s exhibition at Petra’s Small Pavilion ...... 17 The Fahlström and Hagberg spontaneity debate ...... 19 Ekdahl’s exhibition at Gummeson’s ...... 21 The Around Spontaneity touring exhibition ...... 23 Conclusions ...... 25 Bibliography ...... 27 List of Figures ...... 33

Introduction

Aim and research questions Inger Ekdahl was a Swedish painter active from right after WWII until some years ago when she passed away. Her paintings from the fifties were later on usually associated with Abstract Expressionism and in particular Jackson Pollock. After that her style changed significantly and is outside the scope of this study. At a recent exhibition in Stockholm of the “canon” of Swedish female painters, Ekdahl was represented by four paintings from that period, see Figure 26.

My impression is that Ekdahl was considered a new young exciting painter for some years, fell into obscurity, and is now revitalized after passing away. But there is not much research about her, and some catalogue and exhibition information repeat anecdotes or facts of questionable origin.

One problem in discussing her art is that the period description is lost in Swedish. It wasn’t called “Abstract Expressionism” in those days in Sweden, and the French and Swedish descriptions are gone today. The current use of “Abstract Expressionism” implicitly positions Ekdahl as a follower of the American school, but she studied, travelled and exhibited in France and Italy before Pollock was anyone in Europe. I want to analyze how this confused process to understand and classify her art and its international context worked at that time.

The four research questions guiding this study about Ekdahl are:

1. More exactly than the 1950s, when and where did she produce the paintings in a style today associated with Abstract Expressionism? 2. How was her art received by the art world during that period? (by art critics, gallerists, museums, other painters... Who exercised power to what end?) 3. What kind of avant-garde was she associated with and how did she influence, or was influenced by, the contemporary debate regarding that? 4. How was the international contextualization of her art renegotiated?

Previous research There are no research publications focused on Ekdahl. Marta Edling wrote a paper on the art historical narrative of center and periphery, and exemplified with Paris and Stockholm when Ekdahl was active along that axis.1 Employing Pierre Bourdieu, Martin Gustavsson studied the social economical aspects of power on the Swedish art market during 1920-1960 and Ekdahl was an art producer on that market.2 The two Swedish female painters Randi Fisher and Barbro Östlihn were close to Ekdahl in time and have been dissertation topics. Linda Fagerström used feministic theory and Bourdieu to analyze

1 Marta Edling, “From Margin to Margin?: The Stockholm Paris Axis 1944–1953,” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 88, no. 1 (2019): 8, 15

2 Martin Gustavsson, “Makt och konstsmak: Sociala och politiska motsättningar på den svenska konstmarknaden 1920-1960” (PhD diss., Stockholm University, 2002), 132.

Fisher, who was slightly earlier than Ekdahl but today is inscribed in the same female avant-garde.3 Ekdahl might be more similar to Östlihn than Fisher: both of them had a strong international presence and were married to successful artists. The center and periphery narrative studied by Edling is also mentioned explicitly regarding Ekdahl in Öhrner’s dissertation about Östlihn.4

Theory Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as described by Bruno Latour in his book Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory is the basis for Theory and Method of this essay.5 The reader should be warned that the author’s experience of ANT before writing this thesis was virtually nil. Latour’s book is a joy to read, and, if anything, this essay exemplifies how one misunderstands his beautiful detours rather than put them into action.

Although ANT is a theory according to its name, and Latour’s book is filled with methodology, he dislikes calling it theory and method. It is more of a general approach to everything in the social sciences. But his approach is amenable to external rules for how articles, dissertations, essays, or research reports should be written. This study should have Theory and Method parts, and that is that.

The basic theoretical assumption of ANT is to have no assumption. Researching Ekdahl, Feminist theory would have been a reasonable option. You focus at the power imbalances related to gender, and excellent conclusions from that might be possible to reach. The theory provides glasses to see those aspects extra well. But there is also a risk to overexplain power imbalances with that particular theory, and being blind for other explanations. Moreover, the investigation will function at two separate scales: the really small with individuals, and the really large with sweeping social forces. That tends to remove agency from the individuals and attribute it to the large narratives. But if that narrative already was the choice of theory, what was concluded? In ANT you try at great lengths to avoid prescribing social forces on top of the actors in the society, and let them tell the story of social forces.6

Latour’s book on ANT has two parts. The first part, on “How to Deploy Controversies About the Social World,” perhaps falls more into the Theory camp rather than Method, and is structured by five sources of uncertainty: “No Group, Only Group Formation; Action is Overtaken; Objects too Have Agency; Matters of Fact vs. Matters of Concern; Writing Down Risky Accounts.”7

For an Art History essay, the first interesting thing to note is that objects have agency in ANT. Not only painters, gallerists, and the museum visitors have agency, but also the paintings and the museum buildings themselves. Lots of pictures of Ekdahl’s paintings ends this study, and it is not only because pictures of her art are hard to find and nice to look at, but mainly because the paintings themselves are objects we care about in the analysis. We don’t do formal analysis of them, or apply some, say,

3 Linda Fagerström, “Randi Fisher – svensk modernist” (PhD diss., Lund University, 2005), 14-32, 271.

4 Annika Öhrner, “Barbro Östlihn och New York. Konstens rum och möjligheter” (PhD diss., Uppsala University, 2010), 190.

5 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

6 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 136-140.

7 Latour, Reassembling the Social, Contents.

Lacanian psychoanalytic technique, but we treat them as objects that act and analyze them in conjunction with other sources, for example art reviews.8

The first uncertainty, that there is only group formation, no groups, turns out to be central in our analysis. The word group is a technical term from ANT in this essay: It is simply a group of individuals, objects or things. Nothing beyond the ordinary English definition of a group. No sociology on top of it. It could be the Art History students at Stockholm University, the paintings at the Museum of Modern Art, all bit coins, those who like Ekdahl’s art, or whatever. In ANT we don’t think of groups as stable, but in constant renegotiation. And the traces of that helps us build the social world.9

In this essay, two groups of central importance to Ekdahl became visible: concrete art and spontaneity art. They are part of the less visible group abstract art. We do not try to define those groups as styles, isms, positions, by who belongs to them, or by any art historical means available today. Those groups are only groups. The actors in Ekdahl’s days fought to describe and demarcate them, and it is from those conflicts, the traces appear that allow the social to be reassembled. The groups are monitored from Ekdahl – another person or other primary sources would produce different narratives about the groups.10

But everything cannot be hanging freely or be simultaneously discussed in a tiny essay. Standard art historical terms far from Ekdahl, like the Renaissance, are treated as in school.

The technical term network in Actor-Network theory should be defined.11 It is a terrible name for the desired connotation, and Internet did not make it better. The network is not something out there in the real world but an analytical tool. It is a grid to put the individuals and objects appearing from primary sources on, and then track their actions. It allows for more than binary associations between two actors, associations may appear between several actors at different scales and of different magnitudes.

Method The second part of Latour’s ANT book, on “How to Render Associations Traceable Again,” perhaps falls more into the Method camp rather than Theory, and is structured by the three moves: “Localizing the Global; Redistributing the Local; Connecting Sites.”12

The ANT theory prescribes that no sociological theories should be put between the investigated and the researcher. It is almost like anthropology, you observe and let them formulate the social. Turned into a method, you have to record all of the possible primary sources you can find, record their associations and actions to in the network, and then look for the narratives that bubble up. Practitioners

8 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 28-36.

9 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 34-37.

10 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 53-55.

11 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 128-133.

12 Latour, Reassembling the Social, Contents.

3 of ANT are sometimes called ants, because it is a really slow way to walk around on your networks, and in particular you have to be on guard against the leaps usual social theories allow for.13

In one sense the methodology is easy for studying Ekdahl, because the relevance of a primary source has to be confirmed with associations to her, or her paintings. But you cannot start by secondary sources from today and go back to primary from her time, because then you are tainted by the theories of those secondary sources. Instead you have to read years and years of art journals and text search in newspaper databases to find traces of her; visit libraries and look at exhibition catalogues; search for her in correspondence and biographies. And then build from that at all scales, local to global. Try to piece together group formation and narratives with support in the data.14

But with that method the essay would turn into books. Latour is clear on that there is no optimal way to stop. External pressure as a thesis deadline or page limitation is a blessing. One should just stop and write up what you have. The conclusions of a study will not close the research topic.15

Sources Due to the global closedown at the time this essay was researched, essentially only sources available at the Stockholm University Library and the Royal Library in Stockholm could be accessed.

The major primary sources are forty art journal articles, primarily in the Konstrevy and Paletten, and fifty newspaper pieces, primarily in Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet.

Seven exhibition catalogues, seven autobiographical books by artists or art critics, five PhD dissertations, and two Master’s theses from Sweden were included. For biographical purposes, some census and parish records.

The most noteworthy of the remaining ten texts is a CV written by Ekdahl herself in 1959.

Ekdahl’s paintings in Figures 1-41 are also primary sources. The author looked at twenty of them on April 27, 2020, at Malmö konsthall during the exhibition “Ragna Bley & Inger Ekdahl”; at four of them on March 8, 2020, at Artipelag, outside Stockholm, during the exhibition “Signature Women: 100 Years on the Swedish Art Scene”; at three of them on May 22, 2020, in a private collection.

Disposition The analysis is thematically divided into four chapters: Grand Tour, Scouting for avant-garde, Concrete descending, and Spontaneity ascending.

In the last one, on Spontaneity ascending, the theme is Ekdahl’s spontaneity art and its conflicts with concrete art while it ascends. It is the main chapter and anyone well-versed in Swedish modern art could skip a head and start with that. The chapter on Concrete descending describes the main

13 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 140-156.

14 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 191-246.

15 Latour, Reassembling the Social, 148.

4 opponent to spontaneity in occupying space within the avant-garde and investigates the differences between Paris and Stockholm. With Actor-Network Theory we should try to let the actors explain the social, and in Scouting for avant-garde a theory of avant-garde from Ekdahl’s network is described. It is then applied in the chapters on the concrete and spontaneity. The Grand Tour chapter mainly situates Ekdahl in the European art world and her family by primary sources. It provides a foundation for the later chapters and is a good source for biographical information.

After those chapters is a conclusion with the earlier stated questions answered.

Grand Tour

The main point of this chapter is to situate Ekdahl as a member of the Swedish, Italian, French, and in particular, the Parisian art life.

A short note on biographical information is included due to inconsistencies in contemporary texts. Ekdahl was born in Ystad on February 7, 1922, to Margit and Kay Ekdahl.16 Her family moved to Umeå on April 3, 1927.17 On October 26, 1931, her mother died;18 and her father remarried on August 25, 1934.19 The family moved to Boden on October 12, 1932 and then back to Umeå, October 22, 1936.20 Inger Ekdahl, from Umeå, and Eric H. Olsson, from Stockholm, announced their engagement to be married on January 2, 1944;21 and they got married on December 21, 1944.22 They lived in Stockholm and then moved to Malmö.23 They had no children.24 She died on March 15, 2014.25

16 Birth announcement: “Födde,” Svenska Dagbladet, February 8, 1922. Inger Vivica Augusta: Parish record: 1921-1926 (Ystad City Parish, Malmöhus County), 2578. Swedish Tax Agency, phone conversation with on May 14, 2020.

17 Parish record: 1926-1934 (Ystad City Parish, Malmöhus County), 4077. 18 Death announcement: “Döde,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 29, 1931; Parish record: 1902-1935 (Umeå City Parish, Västerbotten County), 1691.

19 Marriage announcement: “Vigde,” Svenska Dagbladet, August 26, 1934; Parish record: 1902-1935 (Upper Luleå Parish, Norrbotten County), 3669.

20 Parish record: 1902-1935 (Upper Luleå Parish, Norrbotten County), 3669. 21 His name is spelled as stated in the engagement announcement: “Förlovade,” Svenska Dagbladet, January 2, 1944. His artist name converged to Eric H. Olson. In public records it was always Erik Harry Olsson.

22 Swedish Tax Agency, phone conversation with, May 14, 2020.

23 The Grünewald and Sköld art schools that Ekdahl attended were in Stockholm. Texts on her husband tend to repeat this story: The couple lived and worked in the tower room of a building in central Stockholm. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation bought the building and had them evicted. Then they moved to Malmö. See: Rolf Söderberg, Mina konstnärsänkor och andra konstminnen (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1999), 98. According to the Swedish Tax Agency (May 14, 2020) they moved to Nikolaigatan in Malmö on August 20, 1977, and lived in Malmö after that. The Agency did not know where they moved from.

24 Swedish Tax Agency, May 14, 2020.

25 Swedish Tax Agency, May 14, 2020. Interred on July 10, 2015.

A CV written by Ekdahl herself at the end of the fifties states that she studied for Isac Grünewald, Otte Sköld, and André Lhote in Paris, and had exhibitions in Paris 1950, 51, 54, 56, 59, and in Italy 1950 and 52.26 The primary sources corroborating and informing about her travels are mainly exhibition reviews in local newspapers, and texts by travelling companions.

Italy and France, 1947-1950 Ekdahl exhibited with her husband and Harald Sandberg at the Hudiksvall City Hotel in November 1947.27 In a review her five paintings are described as constructive in the sense of cubism from around 1910 and with gloomy colors; one of the paintings had the title “Boats on the beach.”28 After a week, Ekdahl had sold one painting, “Still life with torso.”29 During the summer of 1948, Ekdahl and her husband were for some months in Verona, Italy, to paint; Sandberg and his wife visited them.30 The Sandberg couple travelled from Sweden to Italy via Paris and he studied briefly for Lhote but was not convinced, the emphasize was on old material31

Anna Lena Lindberg interviewed ten Swedish students of Lhote in 1966 for her Master’s thesis at Lund University, and Ekdahl met Lhote in 1947.32 Lindberg became an art history professor, and recycled some thesis material for the exhibition on Lhote and his Swedish students at Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, in 2017.33 Lindberg writes in her thesis:

Inger Ekdahl arrived from the south and stayed for a couple of months in Paris heading home. She stayed at a hotel where she couldn’t work in her room; she needed a studio, and went to the school closest by, which was Lhote’s. She knew of him from before. The teaching didn’t contribute much. Inger Ekdahl states that he was an inefficient teacher, not interested in the students, and that she went home. … She didn’t visit Lhote’s academy for the education and wasn’t influenced by him. … Inger Ekdahl’s impression of Lhote is that he wanted it ‘stylized,’ he appreciated the ‘cold intellectual, not the

26 Inger Ekdahl, “Inger Ekdahl född 1922 i Ystad,” 1959. An old CV from her files. On type writer until the exhibition at Gummeson’s in 1959 and then complemented to 1960 in her handwriting. Digitalized copy attained from Malmö Konsthall on May 19, 2020. Isaac Grünewald spelled his name inconsistently in those days, and it is stated as on the CV.

27 “Konstutställning,” Hudiksvallstidningen, November 15, 1947. Hudiksvall is a small town halfway from Umeå to Stockholm.

28 Bert, “Tre konstnärer,” Hudiksvallstidningen, November 17, 1947. 29 “Vid konstutställningen på Stadshotellet…,” Hudiksvallstidningen, November 22, 1947.

30 At the start of June, the Sandbergs had already visited Ekdahl and her husband for a couple of months, and the hotel was 1:85 SEK per day: “Folk man talar om,” Söderhamns tidning, June 3, 1948. Their address was: “Albergo // Giardinetto // Bardolino // Verona,” according to a note by Harald Sandberg on the back of a photo by him: Hans Sandberg, Jag blandar solsken i färgen (Princeton: 2012), 177.

31 Interview with Harald Sandberg by his son: Sandberg, Jag blandar solsken i färgen, 155. 32 Anna Lena Lindberg, “André Lhote och hans Svenska elever efter 1918: Tio intervjuer” (MA Thesis, Lund University, 1967).

33 Anna Lena Lindberg, “Törsten efter det nya. André Lhote och hans svenska elever,” in Form och Färg. André Lhote och svensk kubism, ed. Anna Meister and Karin Sidén (Stockholm: Prins Eugens Waldermarsudde, 2017), 49-76. Recordings and transcriptions of the interviews were deposited by Lindberg at the Royal Library in Stockholm, with exception for the interview with Ekdahl from November 14, 1966.

Nordic romantic.’ A Finnish painter, Pusa, was a student at the same time at the academy; Inger Ekdahl in particularly remembers how Lhote disliked his ‘diffuse’ works.34

In January 1948 Ekdahl had a separate exhibition at Burgman’s gallery in Östersund.35 Although it is one of the largest and oldest cities between Stockholm and Umeå, it only featured about 20 000 citizens around that time, and the Burgman’s gallery is only known to have functioned 1948-1951.36 A review from the exhibition states that Ekdahl had studied at Sköld’s and Grünewald’s schools and some of her subjects were from Switzerland and Italy, among the successful paintings an interior with a masonry heater and a portrait of a young Italian lady. Her paintings were a mix of naturalistic and “the modern French … with broken shapes and brave compositions,” and although experimental, the reviewer believed that she had the faculties to reach good results if committed to it.37

In a review of her exhibition at Expo Aleby in 1949, it is stated that she studied for Grünewald, Sköld, and Lhote.38 The painting “Gables and Cypresses,” with exactly that illustrates the review. The paintings are mainly of cities and landscapes from Italy, the French Riviera, and Paris, but also a fruit still life.

According to a gossip column in Expressen, Ekdahl had a separate exhibition at the Galleria del teatro del Capello in Verona in summer 1950, and she and her husband travels to northern Italy annually since some years; together with some Italian painters they also had group exhibitions.39

Connections home and far away Another review of the Expo Aleby exhibition in 1949 is in the local newspaper for Djursholm, the most affluent suburb of Stockholm. It starts by “An artists, whose name should not be unknown to the readers of Djursholms Tidning, is Inger Ekdahl,…” and continues in a more personal manner than anywhere else:

Inger Ekdahl is young, she was born in the twenties. In school her favorite subject was drawing, and she seriously dedicated herself to art seven years ago. She studied for Grünewald, who gave her his sense of colors, for Otte Sköld, who put the emphasize on composition, and for André Lhote, who showed interest both in color and composition, and moreover, zealously followed his student’s paintings from beginning to end. Together with her husband Eric H. Olson she has travelled to France and Italy and made stimulating acquaintances with painters of all nationalities. This spring they head for

34 Anna Lena Lindberg, “André Lhote och hans Svenska elever efter 1918: Tio intervjuer,” 17, 23, 35. The painter mentioned is most likely Unto Pusa. 35 L. S-t., “Konst: Inger Ekdahl utställer hos Burgmans,” Länstidningen, January 14, 1948.

36 Gamla Östersund, Gamla Östersunds Årsskrift 1981 (Östersund, 1981), 46. It states that the painter Vidar Bäckman from Östersund donated the guest books from the Burgman Gallery for 1948–1951 to the local historical association “Gamla Östersund” in 1981.

37 L. S-t., “Konst: Inger Ekdahl utställer hos Burgmans.” 38 M. S-g., “Ung klarhet,” Stockholms Tidningen, November 25, 1949.

39 “Bekantas bekanta,” Expressen, June 10, 1950. The Verona exhibition is also on her CV and frequently included in later information about Ekdahl.

Africa and Sicily. In the near future travel to South America is also planned, Mrs. Ekdahl tells us.

The artist’s exhibited works are predominantly cityscapes from France and Italy. Her interest is foremost house facades and gables in different lights, and her technique could almost be attributed to the purists, but she clearly has a personal take on it, and doesn’t follow the path of Erik Byström or Helge Linden. The canvases are small and the colors are attenuated and cultivated in an original way. The selection of paintings is good and the impression of her work ambitious and focused. We wish her the best of luck.40

The review was illustrated by a painting of an Italian city. It is similar to the painting in Figure 1, but appears to be on canvas instead of newspaper and slightly more technically developed.

Some statements in the review originating from Ekdahl are slightly outlandish taken as is. Planning a trip to South America from Sweden in 1949 would have been a major and expensive undertaking – but her late grandfather’s brother, the colonel in Chile, was survived by a wife and children whose family still might have been around.41 Even considering that, a trip of that type indicates an unusual level of audacity and independence, as well as a strong international network to fall back on.

The purists Erik Byström and Helge Linden, that her production is contrasted to in the review, are not the most obvious contemporary painters to mention in a local newspaper in central Sweden, as they both represent the very north. In 1942 the art association in the small town of Östersund celebrated Byström as one of their counties’ strongest painters with a large exhibition, and as discussed above, Ekdahl exhibited in Östersund 1948; it is unclear if their connection is stronger than that.42 With Linden the connection is closer, Ekdahl even donated a painting to a foundation established in his memory.43 Helge Linden lived in Umeå, where Ekdahl grew up, and is known for his paintings depicting the area.44 There was a surge of activity and high quality exhibitions in Umeå the years before WWII and Linden had a central position in that.45 Helge Linden had painted in Paris 1927,46 and later on in southern and central France.47

40 G. R., “Mogen debut av ung målarinna,” Djursholms Tidningen, October 28, 1949.

41 “Känd chilesvensk avliden,” Svenska Dagbladet, September 10, 1924. Closer in time to Ekdahl, but also well-travelled and a public person, was her stepmother’s sister, Princess Elin Tuganoff, see “Tuganoff skulle ha rödvin och ägg…,” Dagens Nyheter, April 27, 1984; “Elin Tuganoff: En produktiv konstnärinna,” Dagens Nyheter, March 18, 1984; and Nationalmuseum, “Statens konstsamlingars tillväxt och förvaltning 1948,” Meddelanden från Nationalmuseum 73 (1949): 32.

42 “Konstnytt: Konstförening som jubilerar,” Svenska Dagbladet, November 8, 1942. 43 In the art collection of “Helge Lindens minne” is an oil painting by Ekdahl, 87×61 cm, with identification “HLM 1965/16,” donated by her in 1962; e-mail correspondence with art archivist Suzanne Steneberg at Västerbottens museum at May 5, 2020.

44 Folke Holmér, “Konstkrönika,” Ord och Bild 48 (1939): 54.

45 Arne Lindström, “Konst och konstliv i Övre Norrland,” Ord och Bild 50, no. 5 (1941): 217-218.

46 “Första pristagaren,” Dagens Nyheter, May 7, 1927.

47 “Utställning,” Dagens Nyheter, March 10, 1931.

Paris, -1960 Hundreds of Swedes attended the art classes taught by Grünewald, Sköld, and Lhote.48 Ekdahl was educated at the end of a twenty-five years period when they dominated the Swedish art schools. Although Grünewald and Sköld taught in Stockholm, their formative years as young were in Paris, and they continued to promote that educational route.

According to Rolf Söderberg, the Ekdahl couple made annual month-long visits to Paris during the first half of the fifties. He met them regularly in Paris and once made the train trip from Stockholm to Paris together.49 Ekdahl’s CV includes exhibitions in Paris 1950, 51, 54, 56, 59.50 In an interview 1955 with Ekdahl’s husband regarding how to get exhibited in Paris, it is stated that he had been a couple of months per year in Paris since 1949.51

In this chapter it was demonstrated that Ekdahl’s art education and travels converged to the Paris art scene and Italy. Although the educational route to Paris was not uncommon for Swedish art students at the time, she also had wild plans for trips outside Europe that didn’t materialize.

Scouting for avant-garde

Ekdahl exhibited at Expo Aleby, Stockholm, October 23 – November 6, 1949, and was critiqued in an art journal and nationally distributed newspapers for the first time. Her paintings were likely in the same style as Figure 1, houses and landscapes, but technically better. The composition and color treatment in the studies from France and Italy were fine, but no traces of a personal expression, according to the Konstrevy.52 In Svenska Dagbladet they didn’t consider her ready to be exhibited, but acknowledged her potential for future development.53 Dagens Nyheter agreed: although the paintings were lucid, they are typical art school exercises.54

In the next two chapters, on the descending concrete and the ascending spontaneity, Ekdahl’s ten-year path from houses and landscapes through the tumultuous formation of a new avant-garde is traced. The topic of this chapter is her understanding of that type of art historical process before it happened.

48 The research on Grünewald and Sköld is extensive and for further reference, these two books with excellent illustrations of their art are recommended: Bernhard Grünewald, Orientalen: bilden av Isaac Grünewald i svensk press 1909-1946 (Stockholm: CKM, 2011); Lollo Fogelström, ed., Otte Sköld (Stockholm: Liljevalchs konsthall, 1998). Lhote and his Swedish students were recently exhibited in Stockholm, and a list of students and further references are in the catalogue: Anna Meister and Karin Sidén, ed., Form och Färg. André Lhote och svensk kubism (Stockholm: Prins Eugens Waldermarsudde, 2017).

49 Söderberg, Mina konstnärsänkor och andra konstminnen, 97. 50 Ekdahl, “Inger Ekdahl född 1922 i Ystad,” 1959.

51 Bo Lindwall, “Att ställa ut i Paris – en intervju,” Konstrevy 31, no. 3 (1955): 132, 147.

52 Emmy Melin, “Stockholmskrönikan,” Konstrevy 25, no. 6 (1949): 363.

53 Ulf Hård af Segerstad, “Utställningsrond,” Svenska Dagbladet, November 1, 1949.

54 Yngve Berg, “Konstkrönika,” Dagens Nyheter, October 27, 1949.

To what extent she had theories of the social world that provided guidance and informed decisions for a young painter searching for the avant-garde.

We already know, without reading this essay, that Pollock in the end got more recognition than Ekdahl. It is tempting to add a theoretical social framework to explain that, but it implicitly removes Ekdahl’s agency. With Actor-Network Theory a key point is not to do that. The actors should be allowed to define and explain the social world as they lived in it. If Ekdahl had written a booklet on “Avant-garde after the war,” or corresponded with friends about it, this essay could be fast-forwarded to the next chapter and her theory employed to that. But no primary sources like that are available. The only option is to reconstruct a theory of avant-garde from useful sources as close to Ekdahl as possible. In the previous chapter it was determined that Ekdahl lived and travelled extensively in Sweden, France and Italy; and that her art education is strongly tied to Paris. Art journals from that milieu is the base to infer a theory of the avant-garde.

The creation and annihilation of isms An article in the Konstrevy in 1952 by Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia on Dadaism is interesting because it describes the understanding at that time of how an ism, style, or within our theoretical framework, an Actor-Network Theory group, is upheld.55 At that time Dadaism art was still in living memory and not yet processed by art historians. The actors renegotiating and vitalizing Dadaism were artists, art works, critics, writers, texts, exhibitors, politicians, and scientists according to Buffet-Picabia. She describes a twelve-year period divided chronologically between three places, first New York, then Zurich, and finally Paris. Although later on, New York and Zurich were tied together in Paris, they initially worked separately. It is clear that she understands how chronology will misrepresent the New York – Zurich connection and create a false causality. The messiness in group formation and how art history mangles it, is not lost on the art critics of the fifties. Buffet-Picabia ends the survey by lamenting how Dadaism got a destructive and subversive reputation. She blames the critics and historians who came to final conclusions too soon. She also mentioned that some of the problems that kicked-off Dadaism, a reaction to the academic and rule-based painting, is resurfacing in the abstract again in the fifties, alluding to a Wöfflin-type alternation within the abstract, where focus now shifts from the concrete towards what would be a type of proto-spontaneity.

A style already forgotten in 1949 was luminarism and a Konstrevy article by Carl Nordenfalk from that year discusses how and why styles disappear or stay on in art history.56 It states that:

Consider for example of how our current view of modern painting during the last decades. Clearly it is far more detailed than what we expect to be desired in the future. We may list about twenty fairly well-known isms, and with quite high probability it is predictable that far fewer will be enough in the future. Obviously, style descriptions as cubism and surrealism are unlikely to disappear, but how many will remember the purism or neoplasticism from the twenties or thirties in a hundred years?57

55 Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, “I dadaismens tid,” Konstrevy 28, no. 2 (1952): 76–80. 56 The article considers the European style called “luminarism” in Swedish and “luminisme” in French. It is different from the American style “luminism.”

57 Carl Nordenfalk, “Luminarismen: Ett stilbegrepp som råkat i glömska,” Konstrevy 25, no. 5 (1949): 264-265.

As a young painter in Ekdahl’s setting it should have been known that new avant-garde needs to mobilize artists, art works, critics, writers, texts, exhibitors, politicians, and scientists to get their ism on the playing field. And that is just to start off. Most of those isms will anyway be forgotten.

The place to show off your new avant-garde was the Biennale in Venice. Tyra Lundgren writes about the 1952 edition: How useful it is that the Mecca of contemporary art, Paris, is forced to relocate and sort out. But although they have the art to curate the best pavilions at the Biennale, the French usually don’t succeed in that.58 The only French non-figurative painting was almost hidden away and their young painters brought huge dated replicas from the previous century.59 And as usual, there is lots of Italian art at the Biennale, but some young Swedish academics find no value in it.60

The Italian part of the Biennale was divided into young and established painters, with the noteworthy age limit of 50 years.61 The famous old Italian sculptor Marino Marini, who was represented with one of his admired horse sculptures, expressed to Lundgren his dissatisfaction with the contributions of the young Italian painters:

…how lucky we were in my generation. No one believed in us, no one got involved, or paid attention to us. It was tough and difficult, but we got to paint in peace and mature. It was a privilege that the youth painting for exhibitions don’t have now.62

Ekdahl was only thirty years old in 1952. She had twenty more years as young by Italian standards, and Marini proposed that young artists should paint in piece instead of getting busy marketing their isms. The relative lack of activities by Ekdahl except for painting and exhibiting during the next ten years might simply be interpreted as a reasonable alternative for someone young. That in her theory of an avant-garde you are much older when writing books, giving talks, and promoting exhibitions for your ism.

Avant-garde that fizzled out The French painter Jacques Villon, born 1875, is almost unknown to art history students today, but he was frequently mentioned in Swedish art journals in the fifties.63 The National Gallery for Denmark in Copenhagen had a retrospective in 1948 and according to Haavard Rostrup, he was not considered one of the big French painters at the time, but among the young abstract painters he was very admired.64 Reviewing parts of the Venice Biennale of 1950 in the Konstrevy, Ingrid Rydbeck-Zuhr states that Villon had a complete hall in the French separate exhibition, and that he after WWII became the big

58 Tyra Lundgren, “Biennalen och världskonsten,” Konstrevy 28, no. 4-5 (1952): 208–215.

59 Lundgren, “Biennalen och världskonsten,” 214. 60 Lundgren, “Biennalen och världskonsten,” 209.

61 Lundgren, “Biennalen och världskonsten,” 211.

62 Lundgren, “Biennalen och världskonsten,” 215. 63 At a bachelor level Art History lecture at Stockholm University during Spring 2020 a teacher name dropped painters from old art history books and asked the students if they recognized them. The point was to demonstrate that canons are not stable. One student recognized Villon.

64 Haavard Rostrup, “Jacques Villon,” Konstrevy 24, no. 3 (1948): 116.

11 master for the young abstract and concrete painters with his cubist turned abstract style.65 Marcel Duchamp, Villon’s younger brother, was considered more influential than him in the overall history of abstract art, but less topical at the time.66

According to P. De Man, Villon’s earlier fairly standard cubist style had been influenced by his etchings67. The long lines in preparatory projective drawings that give support and tie together ordinary landscape paintings were replaced by the long lines natural to etching techniques, and the compositions shifted from projective to grids or meshes. In an interview Villon describes his method to create depth in a painting by building it layer by layer, where each layer leaves a trace. Regarding the young painters in Paris that resurrected him right after the war, he states that “they have managed to dissolve the incompatibilities between drawers, like Ingres, and colorists, like Delacroix, by giving up the descriptive. Colors are now more important than drawing, rather than the other way around.”68

Ekdahl made a long visit to Paris annually from 1947. If she searched for a local young avant-garde, then the admirers of Villon would have been more visible than some kind of proto-spontaneity before 1950. Most of Ekdahl’s spontaneity is layer on layer, but some of her paintings also feature grids that are easier to associate with Villon’s young followers than standard spontaneity, see for example Figures 18 and 21.

Villon’s followers didn’t manage to create a new avant-garde although their hero was celebrated at the Biennale and at the most distinguished places. For someone in Ekdahl’s position it should have been known that establishing a new avant-garde requires a wide variety of actions on top of painting, but that it is acceptable, or perhaps even recommended, for those of her age to focus on painting.

Concrete descending

Ekdahl’s paintings at Expo Aleby in 1949 were closer to art school assignments than an independent expression. But she gradually starts evolving towards spontaneity at the center of this essay. Between her early figurative paintings and spontaneity stands the concrete as an interpretive standard model for the abstract. In the next chapter, on spontaneity, the concrete hurdle for Ekdahl is demonstrated in two distinct but related ways:

Ekdahl’s first problem with the concrete, in particular at her exhibition at Petra’s Small Pavilion in 1954, was that although her paintings didn’t follow the theories or canons of the concrete, that was the major interpretive model for abstract art in Sweden. Her paintings were analyzed as alterations or exceptions to the concrete, not as they were.

65 Ingrid Rydbeck-Zuhr, “Biennalen i Venedig 1950: II. Konstnärliga program före 1914 — Utländska paviljonger — Franska separatutställningar,” Konstrevy 26, no. 4-5 (1950): 218-219.

66 Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia “Några minnen från den abstrakta konstens första år”, Konstrevy 26, no. 4-5 (1950): 230–231.

67 P. De Man, “Jacques Villon,” Konstrevy 28, no. 3 (1952): 133–138.

68 Y. Taillandier, “Villon om konst,” Konstrevy 28, no. 3 (1952): 139–140.

Ekdahl’s second problem with the concrete, was actually not her problem, but rather spontaneity’s. At her separate exhibition at Gummeson’s in 1959 the first problem was gone – the critics didn’t mix her up with the concrete anymore, and they had some experience in analyzing spontaneity art. Actually, there was almost a consensus positioning her at the center of spontaneity in Sweden. In the next chapter, based on the Around Spontaneity exhibition in 1959, it is demonstrated that the spontaneity painters as a group didn’t get the momentum to build something together, and they were pegged against the concrete group. The spontaneity group didn’t manage to create enough to activate group formation following the concrete group template. That was their problem with the concrete.

In this chapter the concrete that caused the two problems for Ekdahl and her spontaneity is analyzed. Only artefacts and events in close proximity of Ekdahl’s two problems are considered, because otherwise they are not on her network. For example, programmatic texts in the journal De Stijl from the twenties might be important in a thesis about Ekdahl employing contextualization, but they didn’t show up close to her with the primary sources selected.

Paris Ekdahl participated in 1950, 1951, 1954 and 1956 at the annual group exhibition New Realities in Paris.69 The Swedish contingent during 1950-1956 at that exhibition was mostly concrete and the connection to the main organizer Auguste Herbin grew strong enough to organize an exhibition in his honor 1976 in Stockholm, where Ekdahl and the other Swedes from New Realities exhibitions were represented.70 At the New Realities in 1951, Olle Bærtling had the most space among the Swedish painters. His art was on display at the same wall as Herbin. Nine other Swedish painters, among them Ekdahl, had their contributions exhibited together in a less distinguished manner.71 Greta Knutsson discusses why Swedish artists are tired of French art in the Konstrevy in 1951.72 There is a half-page review of the New Realities exhibition.73 She is surprised by the revolutionary and extraordinary claims by the abstract and in particular concrete artists dominating it, as it is the same art that has been around for years. In particular, she laments the completely non-figurative art that claims complete freedom but instead has become a slave under the rules defining it. The artists that have not pushed the abstraction to its absolute end, but rather kept a connection to the human and nature, even if not directly depicting it, represent the future of abstract art to her. Her general opinion of the Swedish artists at the exhibition is that they have found that balance.

Even if the concrete had started to stagnate in Paris, it was a good place for Swedes to visit for their development. Bærtling exhibited at Galleri Brinken in Stockholm, 1952, and according to a review he had improved and developed the characteristics of his paintings during his recent stay in Paris, but some of his concrete experiments were too abstract and clean.74

69 Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Ekdahl, “Inger Ekdahl född 1922 i Ystad,” 1959. 70 Franska institutet, Hommage à Herbin (Stockholm, 1976).

71 “Svensk konstnär hedrad på storutställning i Paris,” Svenska Dagbladet, June 6, 1951.

72 Greta Knutsson, “Reflexer och Reflexioner,” Konstrevy 27, no. 5-6 (1951): 250.

73 Knutsson, “Reflexer och Reflexioner,” 255.

74 Emmy Melin, “Stockholmskrönikan,” Konstrevy 28, no. 1 (1952): 52.

In Spring 1954, Karl G. (Pontus) Hultén reports in the Konstrevy to Stockholm from Paris. Its art life was is in crisis, and the concrete had stalled and offered no openings. The new was represented by for example Georges Mathieu and Henri Michaux. They were close to spontaneity, but worked more with large spots and cliques similar to calligraphic characters than the Americans, and it was called tachism.75

Sweden The first generation of concrete art had established themselves in Sweden before WWII, according to a survey by Krisitian Romare in the Konstrevy, 1951. Their art had grown naturally from a post-cubist tradition where the figurative was dissolved into large plane geometric pieces.76 The second generation of Swedish concrete art came after the war, for example Bærtling and Olle Bonniér. They were more inspired by the legacy of Piet Mondrian.77

To achieve momentum for the second concrete generation, a theme exhibition was organized together with a programmatic text published in a Swedish art journal. The exhibition “Konkret” at the gallery Blanche in Stockholm during March 19 – April 15, 1949, tried to define the new Swedish art in the concrete group. The represented artists were Bonniér, Arne Jones, Karl Axel Pehrson, and Pierre Olofsson.78 Earlier that year the art critic Hans Eklund wrote a programmatic text on the concrete group in Konstperspektiv.79 The exhibition, and by extension the concrete group, got a theoretical grounding and well-needed support from that programmatic text according an exhibition review.80 Its author, Eklund, was a friend of Bonniér and had helped him earlier with marketing.81 This shows that the artists in Sweden at this time had an understanding for how art groups are kept alive, and the concrete did it well.

Bonniér also wrote about art himself, for example in the Konstrevy about two private art collections in Basel.82 He lamented the lack of appreciation for abstract art among Swedish collectors. According to him, the abstract was transformed into concrete. He described concrete paintings to be characterized by how different distinct parts of them are in balance with each other and how symmetries interact with that. Prominent among his examples was Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

Art critics discussing and trying to predict the future of a group is also important to keep the interest up. Hans Granqvist tried to extrapolate the future development of the concrete group. According to him Wassily Kandinsky was brilliant but went too far and balance had to be restored by the French

75 Karl G. Hultén, “Paris våren 1954 eller – et après?,” Konstrevy 30, no. 4 (1954): 174-176. He changed from “Karl G.” to “Pontus” a short time later on.

76 Kristian Romare, “Neoplasticism,” Konstrevy 27, no. 5-6 (1951): 266-268.

77 Romare, “Neoplasticism,” 269. 78 Lars Erik Åström, “Konkret och abstract,” Expressen, March 19, 1949.

79 Hans Eklund, “Ny realitet – abstrakt och konkret konst,” Konstperspektiv 5, no. 1 (1949): 3-5, 23.

80 Emmy Melin, “Stockholmskrönikan,” Konstrevy 25, no. 3 (1949): 176-178.

81 Clemens Poellinger, “Färgstarkt fyrtiotal,” Svenska Dagbladet, June 26, 2015.

82 Olle Bonniér, “Kring två konstsamlingar i Basel,” Konstrevy 25, no. 1 (1949): 36-41.

Jean Bazaine, Maurice Estève and Villon. The Swedes related to this future path were Bonniér, Lennart Rodhe, and Olofsson.83

When Bærtling exhibited 1953 in the old university town of Uppsala close to Stockholm, his rather strict concrete paintings were not entirely well received by the public. But an informal mini- conference was organized in connection to the exhibition where the crème-de-la-crème of young art historians debated his art and that alone solidified the status of Bærtling within the Swedish concrete group and provided an impetus to revitalize the group itself.84

A year later the art history students at Stockholm University had a debate “figurative art --- to be or not to be,” where the non-figurative was represented by the concrete poster boy Bærtling. As the main opponents had already consolidated their positions, no debate ensued and the floor was left open to pretentious youngsters who repeated old truisms, according to an art journal editorial.85

In this chapter it has been demonstrated that in the middle of the fifties the concrete group in Sweden was alive and doing well; actively supported by art critics, exhibition organizers, theory text writers and the young students. But in Paris it had already started to fade away and evacuate space within the abstract for spontaneity. In the next chapter it becomes clear that Ekdahl and spontaniety didn’t get the same access to space within the abstract in Sweden, as the retreat and regrouping of the remains of the concrete hadn’t started yet.

This essay is only focused on Ekdahl. In a paper on center and periphery, Edling’s main example is Paris-Stockholm and a concrete exhibition in 1953. It is mainly about Hultén and Denise René, and their circles, and it is much more detailed than this text. The conclusions of this chapter are consistent with Edling’s example.86

Spontaneity ascending

This chapter traces the rise of spontaneity at the places Ekdahl was active. It has been established in the essay that she lived in Stockholm and made regular visits to France and Italy in the fifties. Whatever Pollock did in the U.S., it is only of interest to this investigation if there are traces of it where and when Ekdahl painted and exhibited. For example, Clement Greenberg is a household name discussing Pollock today in Sweden, but he wasn’t in the fifties, and thus is not relevant.

Reporting from Paris in the Konstrevy in 1951, Lundgren writes about the avant-garde. The concrete has been around for long enough to develop a terminology in art criticism to analyze it without any problems. But spontaneity is new and poses major challenges for the art critics. The philosophy

83 Hans Granqvist, “Konstens nya realiteter: Ett apropå till Halmstadgruppens utställning,” Konstrevy 25, no. 3 (1949): 173.

84 Bo Lindwall, “Utställningar,” Konstrevy 30, no. 1 (1954): 46-47.

85 Editorial, Konstrevy 30, no. 5-6 (1954): 193.

86 Edling, “From Margin to Margin?,” 5-9.

15 impacting art texts and to some extent painting is existentialism, and Søren Kirkegaard is present in that discourse to a surprising extent for a Scandinavian visitor to Paris.87

Twelve American painters were on display at Liljevalchs in the fall of 1953. It was the first introduction to that art in Sweden and written about a lot in all types of publications. The response to Pollock was confused and not positive, and in particular almost no serious attempts to analyze or interpret. According to one critic, Pollock would be better off printing his paintings on textile for curtains, another described him as walking around high on his canvases, while some thought that the impressive large scale was just a simple consequence of American bigger is better and automation culture.88 The Konstrevy review had no analysis, it consisted of a short bio and a longer quote by Pollock himself that seems to be from a catalogue text, together with a huge figure.89 The pictures of Pollock painting are already endemic. Edith Söderberg reviews movies about art and artists 1953 in the Konstrevy. 90 The largest picture in the review is of Pollock applying paint on a huge flat canvas, and is from a ten-minute movie about him. The figure text does not endorse his art, and states that people attend his exhibitions due to his “sensational” method and that he is well-known from the illustrated magazines.

In December 1953 the first programmatic text for spontaneity in Swedish was published in the major newspaper Dagens Nyheter.91 Its author Hultén would in a few years run the new Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, and the text could also be interpreted as a statement from a young academic positioning himself on the local Stockholm scene of curators and museum administrators.92 A group is constantly renegotiated, and new activity is required to keep it alive. In particular, it is common to have spikes of huge activity when a person or object uproots it and direction changes; the ordinary buzz, hard work and production of art is not enough by itself to sustain a group.

As a museum administrator Hultén was not as committed to spontaneity as a painter would be. He continued on to other groups whose art got exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. In particular, he mostly knew of spontaneity through his visits in Paris and a Pollock exhibition at Liljewalchs that year, and this was while his own position in Stockholm was rather junior.93 Only five years later he was in charge of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm. After his first trip to New York he had been mesmerized by the generation represented by Robert Rauschenberg, whose exhibition and acquired works still constitute what is considered the very highest international standard that was ever attained by the museum. The number two below Hultén at the museum was Carlo Derkert. With the exception for a janitor they were more or less all the paid staff. Exhibitions were organized with lots of students and volunteers working for free, and the artists tended to be friends of Derkert or Hultén, or in

87 Tyra Lundgren, “Pariskrönika,” Konstrevy 27, no. 3 (1951): 140.

88 “Summa summarum,” Konstrevy 30, no. 1 (1954): 21. 89 Bo Lindwall, “12 Amerikanska målare och skulptorer på Liljevalchs,” Konstrevy 30, no. 1 (1954): 18.

90 Eugénie Söderberg, “Aktuella konstfilmer,” Konstrevy 29, no. 2-3 (1953): 77, 79.

91 Karl G. Hultén, “En ny expressionism,” Dagens Nyheter, October 27, 1949. 92Charlotte Bydler, Andreas Gedin and Johanna Ringarp, ed., Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet: vittnesseminarium, Södertörns högskola, 26 april 2017 (Huddinge: Samtidshistoriska institutet, Södertörns högskola, 2018).

93 Bydler, Gedin and Ringarp, Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet, 66-67.

16 close proximity of them.94 Derkert’s mother, Siri Derkert, an expressionist born in 1888 who represented Sweden at the Venice Biennale in 1962, was very close in age and artistic practice to all the women exhibited at the museum. But Ekdahl and the other Swedish women in spontaneity were much younger and in other communities. There is one exception: The only young woman the museum exhibited was the French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, who Hultén knew via her husband Jean Tinguely.95 At the end of the fifties there are no established Swedish male spontaneity painters, and it is unclear if Hultén would have exhibited them.

Turning to the programmatic text itself, Hultén starts by describing how that type of art is derogatorily described in France, and then claims that it is called more neutrally “spontaneity” in the U.S. The paintings are typically non-figurative and non-geometric and the color is applied layer by layer in strings, dots, or large cliques. It is very material, with color on color that create depth. The canvases are usually very large and with the impression of being cut out of infinite ones, there are no clear frames. Randomness is a key part in the painting process, but it is hard to classify how random or structured it is. Paint is simply paint; it is not paint that is applied to depict something, it is all about the paint. If spontaneity is a new ism, it would be the first from the U.S. independent of European influence, according to Hultén. The stated main representatives for this were Pollock, who had a major exhibition in Stockholm at Liljevalchs at that time, Sam Francis from California, and the French- Canadian Jean-Paul Riopelle living in France. Francis, the odd one out, was a close friend of Hultén from the early fifties in Paris.96 It seems like the text by Hultén was more based on French and Swedish impressions of American art than on a first-hand experience in the U.S.

Bo Lindwall reports in the Konstrevy from the 1954 Biennale in Venice. The major new trend is spontaneity and the art history canon fight had started. The Canadian delegation made a concentrated effort in establishing Riopelle as the introducer of spontaneity.97 Hultén reports in the Konstrevy from Paris in Spring 1954. Mathieu and Michaux are close to spontaneity, but they work more with large spots and cliques similar to calligraphic characters, called tachism.98 While Jackson and Riopelle painted on large canvases that could be cutouts of infinite ones, the French canvases instead define and frame the spontaneous to the middle of the paintings and they clearly do not seem to extend into infinity. Ekdahl’s paintings reveal that she was closer to the French way of spontaneity in this regard.

Ekdahl’s exhibition at Petra’s Small Pavilion The Small Pavilion was actually on the bottom floor of a run-down apartment building in a Stockholm area hit by several waves of gentrification since then. It was a low-key operation intent on providing an arena for the newest art, and it succeeded in becoming a radical alternative to the Museum of

94 Bydler, Gedin and Ringarp, Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet, 38-40.

95 Bydler, Gedin and Ringarp, Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet, 61-62.

96 Bydler, Gedin and Ringarp, Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet, 68.

97 Bo Lindwall, “Biennalen i Venedig,” Konstrevy 30, no. 4 (1954): 147, 153.

98 Hultén, “Paris våren 1954 eller – et après?,” 174-176.

Modern Art.99 The two female representatives of Swedish spontaneity at the end of the fifties, Ekdahl and Britt Lundbohm-Reutersvärd, both started at Petra’s.100

Ekdahl opened an exhibition of pastels and oils at the Small Pavilion on October 2, 1954.101 The review by Harry Källmark is the most descriptive, and some of her paintings from slightly earlier and later than 1954, for example in Figures 3-5 and 8-10, are similar. He writes:

The result is some kind of painterly arts and crafts where the canvas is finished with corroding acids, completely splashed with colors, where you scratch and erase, tear and scrape, make new insertions, and finally reach a subtle ‘painting’ where fantasy may stroll around, make new discoveries, settle down, rest, search for escape routes, reach dead ends, want to get out again, etc., … it will always open up for new discoveries and new aesthetic values. But one shouldn’t call it ordinary painting of an established type.102

The review by Nils Palmgren in Aftonbladet is appreciative regarding the small pastels with good color tone and disposition, classified as concrete by him. He continues:

Her explorations in oil and spontaneity (we do remember with a chill the huge canvases with the American Jackson Pollock’s spontaneity), are completely contradictory to the mentioned pastels. I have to admit that I despise painting, and all art forms, that are not controlled by the sentiments or intellect. According to me, this is complete degeneration. Not even a savage’s drawings or a somnambulist’s creations reach these barbaric expressions.103

The reaction in Dagens Nyheter is rather blasé, it mentions the difficulty in classifying the paintings as spontaneity or tachism, and that they would do well as book covers or textile prints.104 The art critic Ulf Hård af Segerstad in Svenska Dagbladet is sympathetic to the color treatment in the abstracts, but claims that the spontaneity paintings are copies from textiles at a fashion exhibition held at the upscale store NK that spring.105 In a letter to the editor, Ekdahl disputes the claim that her paintings are copies, as they were produced before the fashion show, and moreover, they don’t look similar at all; this is

99 Bydler, Gedin and Ringarp, Pontus Hultén på Moderna museet, 105–106; and Åke Livstedt, “Jordiska tankar – en odlares gärning,” Svenska Dagbladet, November 24, 1979.

100 The exhibition history and interviews with Petra, as well as extended sections on Ekdahl and Lundbohm-Reutersvärd, are in Jacqueline Gynter, “Lilla Paviljongen – hos Petra,” (MA Thesis, Stockholm University, 1985). The exhibitors at Petra’s during 1954-1956, excluding groups, were Jörgen Fogelquist, Inger Ekdahl, Sigurd Persson, Gunnar Eriksson, Mona Johansson; Mona Lodström, Kjell Abramson, Inga Grubbström, Tove Friis, Ebba Reutercorna, Rune Janson, Eva Laurell; Kurt Florén, Bertil Berggren, Ingrid Thelander, Gösta Ehrenberg, Märta Rosman, Ola Sandin, and Lundbohm-Reutersvärd. Petra’s formal name was Ebba Konstantia Pettersson. 101 “Dagens vernissager,” Aftonbladet, October 2, 1954; “Lördagens vernissager,” Dagens Nyheter, November 2, 1954. The opening was advertised in all major Stockholm newspapers.

102 Harry Källmark, Dagen, October 7, 1954.

103 Nils Palmgren, “Konstkrönika: Kritik i glädje och sorg,” Aftonbladet, October 7, 1954.

104 Yngve Berg, “Konstkrönika,” Dagens Nyheter, October 7, 1954.

105 Ulf Hård af Segerstad, “Utställningsrond,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 7, 1954.

18 accepted by the art critic.106 An odd detail is that Segerstad participated in producing textile patterns for these fashion shows, and “spontaneity,” by Astrid Sampe got a big picture in his newspaper.107 One reviewer acclaimed the gracious ink drawings that would be suitable for book covers.108 Another confessed to the difficulty in writing critique about the exhibits, but found at least some things beautiful.109 The first painting by Ekdahl to be depicted in the Konstrevy, is from this exhibition, and it is a spontaneity.110 The reception of Ekdahl among art critics was clearly very mixed. Her pastels put her in the concrete group, which was strong at this time in Sweden, but descending internationally. The spontaneity that her oil paintings belong to divides the art critics completely – some don’t find it to be art, others on the forefront of art.

The Fahlström and Hagberg spontaneity debate In 1958 the painter Öyvind Fahlström wrote the article “’spontaneity’: randomness — vision — characters” in the Swedish art journal Paletten.111 It was the only long article on spontaneity in Sweden at that time, and the painter Rune Hagberg entered into a debate with Fahlström on it. Ekdahl had a major exhibition with Hagberg right afterwards, and the reception was heavily influenced by the debate. Fahlström’s article discuss spontaneity as part of the abstract, and in particular, he contrasts and contextualizes the different art historical processes going on by comparing with the concrete group. He was unhappy that the local art debate had slowed down after the figurative versus non- figurative settled, instead of turning to the controversies within the non-figurative, as in Paris. The first part of Fahlström’s article is purposely a rather confused questioning of what is spontaneous in painting and if it really matters. If anything, it points to that other elements than the spontaneous are central to spontaneity. Actually, the article’s title had spontaneity in quotation marks. He proposes that concrete painters have a vision for their paintings manifested in sketches from the start, while spontaneity painters start more with a clean slate and let the manifestations of randomness and the unexpected in the material guide them in the process.

Without a manifest or closer knowledge of an artist’s process, the only thing left is to actually look at and interpret the art, and Fahlström admits to that being the difficult part, and in particular the American spontaneity represented by Francis, Pollock, Riopelle and Tobey.112 According to him you have to look at the paintings from different distances: If you only stand far away and hope for an impressionistic moment where the color cliques come together figuratively, then you will only end up appreciating decorative effects as light on a rugged-up surface. You have to go close and look at the smallest units of colors and shapes, and follow them regrouping as you move over the canvas. And then zoom out and in again and again. After a while, and longer than for a usual painting, this will not be an intellectual exercise, and paths for interpretations open up. The reader of this essay is invited to look at Ekdahl’s paintings in Figures 3, 9, 11, 13, 18, 22, 27, 32, 39, that are presented together with Figures of more detailed zoomed-in parts. Although the share size of the huge canvases that Fahlström

106 Inger Ekdahl, “Herr Redaktör,” Svenska Dagbladet, October 14, 1954.

107 Rips., “Kameran ger nya mönster,” Svenska Dagbladet, May 7, 1954. 108 Stockholms-Tidningen, October 7, 1954.

109 Carl Molin, Arbetet, October 15, 1954.

110 Inger Ekdahl, “Figure: Komposition,” Konstrevy 30, no. 5-6 (1954): 261.

111 Öyvind Fahlström, “’Spontanism’: slump — vision — tecken,” Paletten 19, no. 2 (1958): 48-50.

112 Fahlström, “’Spontanism’,” 50-51.

19 described made it easier to zoom in and out than for Ekdahl’s paintings, the interpretive model is applicable.

Fahlström continues by shortly discussing the calligraphic and Asian connection to spontaneity, in which the small pieces of the canvas are (made up) characters, or the complete painting resembles a character.113 This part of spontaneity was the most European on the Europe-U.S. scale, and the character’s invitation and encouragement to interpretation makes that part of spontaneity the way forward according to him. Although some small units in Ekdahl’s paintings, see for example Figure 12, are almost like calligraphic characters, she wasn’t in that part of spontaneity. Fahlström and Hagberg later slowly diverged into more of characters, language and theory, and although outside the scope of this essay, one may note that their text production during this spontaneity debate and their status of portal figures were transferred to other areas and fields.114

Hagberg answered Fahlström in the next issue of Paletten, and Fahlström was provided space for a reply to Hagberg in that issue too.115 The main problem with Fahlström’s text according to Hagberg is that he puts quotation marks on the spontaneous and proposes that it can’t be understood. Hagberg proposes a classification of spontaneous painting processes into two main types: In the first type the painter bursts out in one or a few major spontaneous spasms working over the complete canvas. In the second type the painter repeats many small random moves while gradually covering the canvas. The painting of random large characters, a common Japanese spontaneity at that time, also exercised by Hagberg, is his example of the first type. The second type would include Pollock.

Fahlström replies to Hagberg that he didn’t address the most basic problem with requiring the spontaneous in spontaneity, that you need insight in the artist’s psyche and emotional life to assure that the random is random.116 He repeats that the spontaneous is not essential, and:

It has to be more important how we perceive the finished art work. Anyhow it was created, unanswered are the questions of unity in composition, the organic rhythms, the connection between small and large shapes, the inside-out naturalism, the material as stabilizer of shape, the color’s liberation through glissando, characters as mass, figure, diagram.117

113 Fahlström, “’Spontanism’,” 51-52.

114 Fahlström included more and more text in his drawings and paintings, that gradually also became more political. Hagberg was a favorite painter of some of the most influential Swedish post-modernist authors. Regarding a Hagberg exhibition catalogue, an art critic wrote: “I have to grab my typewriter, hold onto it hard, and restrain myself from writing that this is just snobbery and bullshit. From time to time Carl- Johan Malmberg makes interesting reflections. But they drown in ‘intellectual’ 80-ties rhetoric that we for sure hope to be completely eradicated or immunized against within a decade.” In Leif Nylén, “Rune Hagberg: I tuschets frihet,” Dagens Nyheter, March 3, 1989.

115 Rune Hagberg, “’Spontanismen’,” Paletten 19, no. 3 (1958): 84-86.

116 Öyvind Fahlström, Reply to Hagberg, Paletten 19, no. 3 (1958): 86-87.

117 Fahlström, Reply to Hagberg, 87.

Ekdahl’s exhibition at Gummeson’s Ekdahl’s exhibition at Gummeson’s in Stockholm attracted more attention than those earlier and later on. It was a separate exhibition together with Hagberg during January 17 – February 8, 1959.118 Gummeson’s gallery was until WWII legendary for its exhibitions of international contemporary art, for example of Max Ernst, Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and its owner worked hard to persuade clients to buy that instead of something figurative.119 Although Gummeson’s for example represented Andy Warhol, they mostly exhibited Swedes after the war.120 The potential for Ekdahl to sell her paintings is unclear. The list of sales for Bærtling at the exhibition “concrete realism” together with Robert Jacobsen and Richard Mortensen at Liljevalchs in 1956 was analyzed by the economic historian Gustavsson, and Bærtling sold much less than expected, and moreover, the exhibition had to be economically guaranteed by wealthy friends.121 According to Hagberg, he and Ekdahl had to cover the fairly large exhibition expenses at Gummeson’s.122 At least she sold the paintings in Figures 18 and 21. The Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm bought thirty Swedish paintings that year, and Ekdahl’s in Figure 21 was one of them.123 The public reaction was mixed. An elegant couple tore up the list of paintings and let the pieces fall onto the gallery floor. Ekdahl considered that positive feedback and her husband responded that the pieces did not fall as neatly as Jean Arp’s.124

The review by Torsten Bergmark in Dagens Nyheter is based on the Fahlström – Hagberg debate and he puts Ekdahl in the Fahlström camp where the spontaneous is not central to spontaneity.125

118 “Gummesons,” Svenska Dagbladet, January 17, 1959; “Gummesons,” Svenska Dagbladet, February 8, 1959.

119 Paulina Sokolow and Anna-Stina Malmborg, ed., Modernt före moderna: Bukowskis önskeutställning (Stockholm: Bukowskis, 2013): 22-23, 164.

120 Sokolow and Malmborg, Modernt före moderna, 167. 121 Gustavsson, “Makt och konstsmak,” 133.

122 Rune Hagberg, Händelser (Löderup: JHB, 2008): 255.

123 Formally the Museum of Modern Art was still a division of the National Museum at that time. Donations and acquisitions are recorded in Nationalmuseum, “Statens konstsamlingars tillväxt och förvaltning 1959,” Meddelanden från Nationalmuseum 84 (1960): 27-28. They also bought a spontaneity painting by Lundbohm-Reutersvärd (NM 5427). About twenty Swedish paintings were donated that year to the Museum of Modern Art, one of them painted by Ekdahl’s husband and donated by Bærtling (NM 5497). Actually, the years before that, Bærtling and Ekdahl’s husband were not on friendly terms, see Söderberg, Mina konstnärsänkor och andra konstminnen, 97. Ekdahl’s husband later constructed a glass sculpture called: “A celebration of Olle Bærtling,” see Johansson, Samla sitt liv, 164-165. Thirteen foreign paintings were acquired 1959, including a spontaneity by Riopelle (NM 5465). In 1975, after her spontaneity, the museum bought another of Ekdahl’s paintings (NM 6611). According to Martin Sundberg, paintings by female artists were usually acquired by the museum within a short time-frame without gaps, and he suggested that it might be because acquisitions follow the changes in management. Ekdahl and Brita Nordenfeldt are mentioned as notable exceptions to this. See: Martin Sundberg, “Innanför och utanför tullarna: Moderna Museet,” in Representation och regionalitet: genusstrukturer i fyra svenska konstmuseisamlingar, ed. Anna Tellgren and Jeff Werner (Stockholm: Statens kulturråd, 2011), 32, 49. There seem to be minor gaps in the index of female painters and their representation at the Museum of Modern Art, for example the Lundbohm-Reutersvärd (NM 5427) mentioned above is missing in: Anna Tellgren and Jeff Werner, ed., Representation och regionalitet: genusstrukturer i fyra svenska konstmuseisamlingar, (Stockholm: Statens kulturråd, 2011), 154.

124 Hagberg, Händelser, 261.

125 Torsten Bergmark, “Konstkrönika,” Dagens Nyheter, January 22, 1959.

In Svenska Dagbladet the review by Lars Erik Åström is illustrated with a composition by Ekdahl, fairly similar to half of the painting in Figure 32, which is from a year later.126 He positions both Ekdahl and Hagberg in spontaneity, and agrees with Bergmark that her painting is more about composition than spontaneous acts. He follows Fahlström’s interpretative model of zooming in and out in her paintings to experience the interaction between minuscule and infinite, as well as complementing the romantic color treatment. He ends by acknowledging that certain elements from Pollock are recognizable, but instead of his large canvases and high volume, she has her own “beautiful and genuinely fragile tone.” In the Aftonbladet review by Eklund, spontaneity is introduced as the international style alive and kicking in a fairly tired art world.127 Ekdahl is described as a representative of it for five years, with a particularly good sense of colors and wide enough repertoire. The review is illustrated with a large picture of a composition from 1955 similar to the one in Figure 32. Although none of the compositions are named or a catalogue produced, the reviewer proposes names as: “‘gloomy mood,’ ‘clouding in blue,’ ‘textile characteristics,’ and simply ‘beautiful.’” Ekdahl and Hagberg are qualitatively positioned at the same level as their international peers by him. Right after that the exhibition closed, one of Riopelle opened at the Swedish-French gallery in Stockholm. In a review of their exhibitions in Expressen, Ekdahl is described as representing the best of spontaneity in Sweden and that they both aim to build depth by layer on layer.128 She builds her monochromatic layers with thin lines in an almost scientific way, with a methodic color selection depending on the lower layers. According to the reviewer Riopelle also knows how to do that, but achieves more instability between the layers and opens up for interpretations as you move across the canvas, and “where Inger Ekdahl implements Dürer’s renaissance perspectives by warm vs. cold colors, Riopelle builds baroque vertiginous clouded plafonds.” In the art journal Paletten, Ekdahl was only mentioned briefly as working in spontaneity, and her way of building depth with colors considered vague. They raised Riopelle to magnificence in the next paragraph without comparing to Ekdahl.129 In the other big Swedish art journal, Konstrevy, Ekdahl was introduced as the only Swede really into spontaneity, but with a “melancholic tone,” not represented by the Americans.130 Her paintings are described as built layer by layer with controlled colors, and an intention of objectivity is ascribed to her. She is as a methodic painter with a small production hailed by those already committed to that contemporary style, and the exhibition might serve as a platform for a wider audience. The review was illustrated with the same painting as in the ones mentioned earlier.

To sum up, the reviews clearly positioned Ekdahl at the center of the small Swedish contingent of the international movement spontaneity, and any references to the concrete are gone. Except for Hagberg, who it is natural to compare with since they co-exhibited, Ekdahl is not contextualized by referring to a Swedish canon, which was common in art reviews at that time. There are no signs of a group forming around her as a leader, or her adhering to anyone else locally.

Although Ekdahl and Hagberg were quite different in how spontaneous the painting process was, there are similarities. An art critic talked to Hagberg at an early exhibition:

126 Lars Erik Åström, “Spontanister och realister,” Svenska Dagbladet, January 22, 1959.

127 Hans Eklund, “Till det minst formtrötta i dagens konstliv hör SPONTANISMEN,” Aftonbladet, January 27, 1959.

128 Clas Brunius, “Så bakar Riopelle en tigrerad kaka,” Expressen, February 19, 1959.

129 Torsten Palmér, “Reflexer,” Paletten 20, no. 1 (1959): 27.

130 Eugen Wretholm, “Utställningar i Stockholm: januari-februari,” Konstrevy 35, no. 2 (1959): 76.

-- The background is soiled. -- Is it? -- Yes, look at it from the side. -- Right, I see it, never thought of it, there are traces of earlier erased images. -- Then it’s poorly erased. Makes a sloppy impression. -- It doesn’t matter. On the contrary! It becomes a palimpsest, one could say. -- Palimpsest? What’s that?131

A palimpsest is a text on top of a scraped off or washed away text on paper, papyrus, or anything old. Hagberg continued by gradually focusing more and more on the erasure and destruction of the paper itself rather than the Chinese ink characters on it.132 But long before that, in a review of the Small Pavilion cited above, Källmark describes similar erasure and reapplication in Ekdahl’s paintings. In details of her paintings in Figures 14, 15, 23, 24, 28-30 are small color drops that partly have dried on their boundaries before their centers have been washed or scraped off. The layers above are either partial grids, more splashes, or an impasto quite unusual for spontaneity. These aspects of Ekdahl’s art do not seem to be discussed anywhere, perhaps related to that erasure and palimpsest in Swedish art history are more attributed to the international influences arriving to Stockholm right afterwards with Rauschenberg, and it doesn’t fit the international spontaneity narrative.133

In 1959 a Stockholm city gallery with international profile organized a summer exhibition featuring Ekdahl, Fahlström and Lambert Werner. Foreign connoisseurs visiting Stockholm for the summer would consider Swedish art provincial if it wasn’t for that exhibition and the Museum of Modern Art according to an art critic.134

The Around Spontaneity touring exhibition Ekdahl had four paintings included in a national educational tour on spontaneity.135 The Swedish National Association for Art Education organized hundreds of exhibitions that toured around the

131 Hagberg, Händelser, 205.

132 Gränsens position: ett möte med konstnären Rune Hagberg: en dokumentärfilm, directed by Johan Hagberg, (2005). VHS.

133 Regarding Rauschenberg and Palimpsest, see Pam Meecham and Julie Sheldon, Modern Art: A critical introduction (London: Routledge, 2013), 166. 134 Clas Brunius, “Svenska modernister på Sturegalleriet,” Expressen, August 9, 1959.

135 Ekdahl was represented with four pieces: Painting I, Oil and lacquer, 51×65 cm, Painting II, Oil and lacquer, 60×81 cm (in a private collection), Drawing I, 19×25 cm, Drawing II, 23×31 cm. The other represented were the Swedes: Torsten Andersson, Fahlström, Hagberg, Felix Hatz, Olof Hellström, Carl Otto Hultén, Roland Kempe, Leif Knudsen, Bengt Lindström, Lundbohm-Reutersvärd, Evert Lundquist, Wiking Svenson, Werner; and foreigners: Karel Appel (Paris, born in Amsterdam), Francois Arnal (Paris), Bogart (Paris, born in Delft), Alberto Burri (Rome), Camille Bryen (Paris), Gianni Dova (Milano), Jean Dubuffet (Paris), Hans Hartung (Paris, born in Germany), Olivier Herdies (Stockholm, born in Brussels), Asger Jorn (Paris, born in Denmark), Tadeusz Kantor (Paris, born in Krakow), Marfaing (Paris, born in Toulouse), Maryan (Paris, born in Polen), André Masson (Paris), Georges Mathieu (Paris), Sugai Kumi (Paris, born in Japan), Antonio Tapies (Barcelona), Tal Coat (Paris), Zao Wou-Ki (Paris, born in China). The catalogue: Riksförbundet för bildande konst, Kring spontanismen: Vandringsutställning nr 200, (Stockholm, 1959). According to the introduction they had tried to get paintings by Francis, Franz Kline, Pollock and Wols, but failed to.

23 country, and usually the topics were fairly well demarcated by the local canon. In 1959 they organized “Around spontaneity” and the catalogue introduction by Åström is cautious to the extent of seeming nervous about what they have compiled:

… this theme is from the most topical in art. That it is an orientation rather than stating a particular position should not need to be emphasized. It has always been our objective to exhibit what goes on right now, even if the discussion about it is ongoing. … many names have been used for it: spontaneity, tachism, action painting, abstract expressionism, etc. … As spontaneity is the prevailing term in Sweden, we have stuck to that one for simplicity. But it should be noted that the exhibition is called ‘Around spontaneity’, and everything exhibited can’t be included in that description.136

The introduction continues by acknowledging that spontaneity is by design in opposition to the concrete, but “it is in no way a group movement or coordinated action, rather to the contrary. It is the individual’s solo performances, hermits dreaming of liberation, eccentric’s boundless self-assertions, and perhaps most interesting, the experimenter’s attempt towards higher expressivity by new means.”137 The small group of ten Swedes represented at the exhibition did indeed not make any concentrated or joint effort in promoting spontaneity. The only two of them with a significant production of texts and theory were Fahlström and Hagberg, whose efforts have been discussed above. But their position within the Swedish avant-garde was strong. For example, when the young art history students at Stockholm University in Febraury 1960 started their pretentiously declared “unpretentious” art journal Artesa, they asked the question “How will the sixties turn out?” and interviewed Fahlström; Hagberg; Sugai Kumi and Bengt Lindström, who also both exhibited at ‘Around spontaneity’; Ekdahl’s husband; and four more about it.138 The answers are completely incoherent and provide no firm foundation for further spontaneity in Sweden, actually the concrete is given more support.

The arena to build further support for spontaneity in Sweden was open for the actors close to Ekdahl, but they didn’t seize the opportunity in a coordinated fashion. If that is intrinsically connected to their art expression, as alluded to in the introduction to the ‘Around spontaneity,’ requires further support to be established.

The exhibition reached the general public in several ways. Study circles were organized in small towns and sometimes the Swedish painters had presentations.139 At its exhibition in Stockholm a piece of protective material for Fahlström’s paintings was, perhaps by intent, mistaken for a spontaneity painting of his and mounted to the gallery wall along with his original contributions. That spectacle even made it to the evening television news.140 The art critics all reacted loudly to the exhibition, but

136 Lars Erik Åström, Introduction, in Kring spontanismen: Vandringsutställning nr 200, Riksförbundet för bildande konst (Stockholm, 1959).

137 Åström, Introduction, 1959. 138 Editorial and “Hur ska det gå på 60-talet – en enkät,” Artesa 1 (February 1960): 1-7.

139 Hagberg, Händelser, 263-264.

140 Broadcasted by Aktuellt on September 3, 1959, see: David Rynell Åhlén, “Samtida konst på bästa sändningstid: Konst i svensk television 1956-1969” (PhD diss., Lund University, 2016), 74-76. The ‘Around spontaneity’ exhibition was featured by the art show Prisma on March 19, 1959, and Fahlström talked about paintings and demonstrated the technique, see: Rynell Åhlén, “Samtida konst på bästa

24 very differently; the most positive review was by Ulf Linde at Dagens Nyheter.141 The focus was on foreign painters and Ekdahl is not mentioned.

Conclusions

After walking around as an ant in the actor-network for Ekdahl some patterns on different scales emerged. A subdivision of the network into thematic pieces based yielded the four chapters of our analysis: Grand Tour, Scouting for avant-garde, Concrete descending, and Spontaneity ascending. That thematic structure is an important result in itself, because with the Actor-Network Theory used, it points to that the fight for space between the concrete and spontaneity, with a Paris-Stockholm time lag, was important for Ekdahl.

Four questions were asked in the introduction of this essay and we summarize their answers reached in the analysis.

More exactly than the 1950s, when and where did she produce the paintings in a style today associated with Abstract Expressionism? The exhibitions at Petra’s Small Pavilion in 1954 and at Gummesson’s in 1959, both in Stockholm, are her most debated by art critics. At the first one, parts of it was spontaneity, and at the second one completely. Judging from the paintings depicted in the Figures, her paintings from 1952-1964 are associated with the style Abstract Expressionism, but those before and after are not.

How was her art received by the art world during that period? (by art critics, gallerists, museums, other painters... Who exercised power to what end?) She had two separate exhibitions in Stockholm at prominent places and one painting was bought by the Museum of Modern Art, which indicates success. The reception by art critics was initially as mixed as it could be, with her art and the spontaneity regularly conflated and there was a lack of real analysis of the paintings. The local Swedish art community lacked the tools to receive art of her kind, and that by itself created conflicts and dissatisfaction. The internationally preceding subgroup of the abstract, the concrete, had worked hard locally to establish a discourse and exhibition tradition to support them. When spontaneity arrived to Stockholm, no one stepped up to defend it locally and consciously build the group as was done for the concrete. Internationally the main proponents for spontaneity were not in France or Italy where Ekdahl had an exhibition history, but in New York where it is unclear if Ekdahl had any contacts at that point.

What kind of avant-garde was she associated with and how did she influence, or was influenced by, the contemporary debate regarding that? In the middle of her first period, around 1955-1960, Ekdahl was the primary representative of spontaneity in Sweden, an avant-garde initiated in the U.S. and Europe, later called abstract expressionism internationally. Swedish art critics who reviewed her art

sändningstid,” 117. In the extensive survey of contemporary art on Swedish Television 1956-1969 in Rynell Åhlén’s dissertation, Ekdahl is not mentioned.

141 Ulf Linde, “Den nya öppenheten,” Dagens Nyheter, August 25, 1959.

25 mostly ended up discussing that avant-garde in general instead of her paintings, thereby first appreciating it when the international understanding of the style had filtered down to Sweden. During the same period, concrete art had started to fade internationally but was doing well in Sweden with strong representatives, exhibitions, and programmatic texts. Within the abstract, spontaneity never managed to claim enough space from the concrete in Sweden to become a sustainable group for a longer period. Ekdahl essentially only contributed to the contemporary debate by the art she produced and the texts and artifacts produced by others in response to them. She never published the programmatic texts or co-organized the group exhibitions on spontaneity, that would have been required by some Swedes in spontaneity to revitalize it after the initial international impetus. It might be that she simply wasn’t interested in doing that. That the two painters most grounded in spontaneity in Sweden, Ekdahl and Britt Lundbohm-Reutersvärd, were women, clearly stopped some paths for spontaneity, for example at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm.

How was the international contextualization of her art renegotiated? Due to the extraordinary global restrictions at the time of writing this essay, most libraries that potentially could have provided exhibition catalogues or other evidence for Ekdahl’s activities, were closed. No primary sources were attained from abroad and the answer to this question is less researched than the other. When Ekdahl’s art finally took off, around 1955-1960, her travels to abroad seem to have faded and no international major exhibitions are known. On the international stage, spontaneity was at its peak but was slowly starting to lose ground to pop art, in particular since it provided templates for successful group formation in the U.S., that didn’t have any art styles exported before that. When the concrete art faded internationally, the Swedish contingent anyway managed to keep it running for a while thanks to the strong national infrastructure for it and slow Swedish adaptation. But when spontaneity had had its time internationally, that support wasn’t in place in Sweden to keep it running, and its American follow up pop art already had strong local proponents in Stockholm.

This essay made a stab at Ekdahl’s first period employing a very restricted collection of primary sources. There are archives in Paris, Stockholm, Umeå and Ystad that could provide a more nuanced and complete picture. One conclusion of the investigation is that the dynamic between the concrete and spontaneity groups in Sweden might have stopped Ekdahl’s progress. What has not been discussed is that after a longer break Ekdahl changed her expression completely, and firmly ended up in the concrete group, see Figure 42, where also her husband Eric H. Olson had international success. How that came about would be an interesting research question. Another question regards the triple Inger Ekdahl, Britt Lundbohm-Reutersvärd, and Thea Ekdahl. At the end of the 60-ties these three women represented the international avant-guard of abstract art in Stockholm, and all had good art and family connections, education, and so on. It seems like three women “appropriated” the hard core international male new art, and that killed it in Stockholm.

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List of Figures

1. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, n.d, Oil on newspaper, 34×25 cm, Private collection. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 2. Backside of the painting in Figure 1. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 3. Inger Ekdahl, Forest interior, 1952, Oil on canvas, 33×41 cm, Private collection. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 4. Detail of the painting in Figure 3. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 5. Detail of the painting in Figure 3. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 6. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1953, Ink on paper, 40×33 cm, Galleri Gösta Bergman, Stockholm. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 7. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1953, Ink on paper, 40×33 cm, Galleri Gösta Bergman, Stockholm. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 8. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1954, Oil on panel, 36×43 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 9. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled (II), 1955, Oil on canvas, 45×100 cm, Malmö konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. According to a label on the back it was first sold by the Association for Art in Schools (Föreningen för konst i skolan) at their 154th exhibition, price 1 000 SEK. Sold by Gomér & Anderson, Norrköping, April 21, 2017; Stockholms Auktionsverk, May 16, 2019, lot 335. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 10. Detail of the painting in Figure 9. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 11. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1955, Oil on panel, 32×24 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 12. Detail of the painting in Figure 11. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 13. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1958, Lacquer on panel, 30×40 cm, Private collection. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 14. Detail of the painting in Figure 13. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 15. Detail of the painting in Figure 13. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 16. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1956, Oil on canvas, n.×., Private collection. Exhibited at Artipelag in 2020, see Figure 26. Photo: Alexander Engström, March 8, 2020. 17. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1958, Oil on panel, 28,5×36,5 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 18. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled (K7), 1958, Oil on panel, 47,5×64 cm, Malmö Konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Originally sold at Gummesons konstgalleri, then at Stockholms Auktionsverk, September 3, 2018; Stockholms Auktionsverk, May 16, 2019, lot 336. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 19. Detail of the painting in Figure 18. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 20. Inger Ekdahl, Painting I, 1958-1959, Lacquer on Canvas, n.×., Norrköpings Konstmuseum. Exhibited at Artipelag 2020, see Figure 26. Photo: Alexander Engström, March 8, 2020. 21. Inger Ekdahl, Dusk lattice, 1958, Oil on canvas, 54×74,5 cm, Museum of Moderna Art, Stockholm. Photo: Museum of Moderna Art, Stockholm. 22. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled (Nr 5), 1959, Oil on canvas, 61×46 cm, Malmö konstmuseum. Sold at Stockholms Auktionsverk, February 1, 2014; Stockholms Auktionsverk, May 16, 2019, lot 340. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020.

23. Detail of the painting in Figure 22. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 24. Detail of the painting in Figure 22. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 25. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1959, Oil on canvas, n.×., Private collection. Exhibited at Artipelag 2020. Sold at Stockholms Auktionsverk, November 30, 2017. See Figure 26. Photo: Alexander Engström, March 8, 2020. 26. Inger Ekdahl, the four paintings exhibited at Artipelag, 2020. The top one is Inger Ekdahl, N:o 3, 1956-1958, Oil and lacquer, n.×., Per Ekström Museet. The other paintings are in Figures 20, 16, 25. Photo: Alexander Engström, March 8, 2020. 27. Inger Ekdahl, Painting I, 1960, Oil on panel, 123,5×62,5 cm, Private collection. Gift from Ekdahl to the late Karl-Erik Johansson. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 28. Detail of the painting in Figure 27. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 29. Detail of the painting in Figure 27. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 30. Detail of the painting in Figure 27. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 31. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1960, Oil on panel, 27,5×22,5 cm, Private collection. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 32. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1960, Oil on canvas, 55×38 cm, Private collection. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 33. Detail of the painting in Figure 32. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 34. Detail of the painting in Figure 32. Photo: Alexander Engström, May 22, 2020. 35. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1961, Oil on panel, 50×63 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 36. Inger Ekdahl, Composition, n.d., Oil on panel, 48,5×21,5 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 37. Detail of the painting in Figure 36. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 38. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1963, Lacquer on cartoon, 13,5×32,5 cm, Private collection. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 39. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1964, Lacquer on masonite, 56×66 cm, Private collection. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 40. Detail of the painting in Figure 39. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 41. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1964, Oil on panel, 89,5×56,5 cm, Ystads konstmuseum. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 42. Inger Ekdahl, five paintings from 1977-1985 at Malmö konsthall. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1977, Oil on canvas, 58×58 cm, Ystads konstmuseum; Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, n.d., Acrylic on canvas, 50×50 cm, Private collection; Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1982, Oil on canvas, 58×58 cm, Malmö konstmuseum; Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1982, Oil on canvas, 50×50 cm, Ystads konstmuseum; Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, 1985, Acrylic on panel, 62 ×62 cm, Carl Fredrik Hårleman. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020. 43. Inger Ekdahl, Untitled, n.d., Acrylic on canvas, 33×41 cm, Private collection. Exhibited at Malmö Konsthall 2020. Photo: Alexander Engström, April 27, 2020.

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