CARL FREDRIK REUTERSWÄRD. Composition “Boomerang&Buttons”. Lacquer on canvas, signed Reuterswärd. Dimensions, PLEASE NOTE 72x173 cm! Also signed on verso C F Reuterswärd, 1987.

Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd was central to Swedish and international post-war art. His extensive and multifaceted artistry spans nearly seven decades, and includes several different pseudonyms and techniques, always challenging himself and the establishment.
He studied with Fernand Léger in Paris in 1951, and from 1952 to 1955 he read at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. The following year he became professor of painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and in the same year introduced lasers and holograms as an art form. In the fall of 1974, he took up a visiting professorship at the Minneapolis School of Art in the United States.
Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd is best known for his sculpture Non-Violence, which depicts a revolver with a knot on the barrel. It was created as a reaction to the assassination of John Lennon in 1980 and has become a symbol of peace struggles worldwide. Carl-Fredrik Reuterswärd had got to know Lennon and Yoko Ono when he was living in Switzerland and Yoko asked him to make an artistic tribute to John Lennon and his vision of peace. At first, the sculpture was placed as a memorial in Central Park, but in 1988 it was donated to the United Nations through a donation from the Luxembourg government, and placed in front of the United Nations House in New York.