326. LARS-GUNNAR NORDSTRÖM. Vertical activity.

Oil on masonite, 125 x 58 cm. Signed and dated on verso L-G Nordström 1953.

PROVENANCE
Bukowskis Auctions, December 2000

EXHIBITED
Movement in Art, Dansmuseet, Stockholm, 2001.

Lars-Gunnar Nordström is a giant of modern Finnish art, an international character with a very own visual language. Although he is described as an autodidact, he was one of the central forerunners of abstract art in Finland.

Nordström, also called Nubben, grew up in an architect family and studied at the School of Art and Design where he graduated from the interior design line in 1949. In parallel with his work as a planner at various architectural firms, he painted and became increasingly noted for his output. During the 1950s onwards, he was offered to participate in more and more exhibitions and also executed a number of large murals in public settings, which had a decisive influence on the breakthrough of abstract art in Finland.

Nordström became known for his energy, purposefulness and diligence. He was also very productive. In the same year that “Vertical Activity” was performed, he exhibited at Young Finnish Art in Stockholm and Gothenburg. During the year, a monumental wall composition was also added for a restaurant in Pori, which will be the first completely non-figurative of its kind in the country. The many monumental paintings of his long career demonstrate Nubben's interest in integrating visual art into architecture, and in creating new spaces in and around his art.

“Vertical Activity” was performed early in Nordström's work, in 1953, just four years after his first solo exhibition - the first completely non-figurative exhibition in Finland. Already then he had begun to develop his ambiguous spaces where movement seems to emerge between surface and depth through rhythmic vibrations and where the design is based on the opposites of the forms. Consistently, and without looking at other currents of art, he continued over the years to paint and sculpt according to the vision that struck him early on; developing a great simplicity in which the number of colors is reduced to create a constantly interacting world of images and colors. Here the shape, color and line take a majestic center stage. In the painting, the precisely cut and contrasting color schemes dance in red, blue and green as notes and timbres do.. Perhaps Nordström here transmits his love of jazz in art? The glossy, hard surface gives off balance and symmetry, but also a fragility and a sense that the work is almost about to be blown up from within.

Despite its clear visual purity, “Vertical Activity” displays an unusual sense of playfulness and dynamism, immersing the viewer into Nordström's association-free and geometric world. In the painting we once again get proof of why Nordström is regarded as one of the Nordic region's foremost constructivists.