Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Sigrid Hjertén som ekspresjonist

1983; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 52; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233608308604015

1651-2294

Marit Werenskiold,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Summary According to several of her Scandinavian fellow students at the Académie Matisse in Paris c. 1910, Sigrid Hjertén (1885–1948) was the one in whom Matisse showed the most interest. Her position as his favourite pupil is the motif of Arvid Fougstedt's well‐known drawing of the Academy, showing Matisse standing in front of a nude study painted by Sigrid Hjertén, discussing it with her, while the surrounding crowd of male Scandinavian pupils are listening attentively and admiringly. The dark young man with the palette to the right of Hjertén is Isaac Grünewald, later to become her husband and the leading light of modern art, or »Expressionism«, in Sweden. Sigrid Hjertén was born in Sundsvall, the daughter of a high official, and educated at Stockholm's High School of Industrial Art. Here she soon attracted attention because of her designs for tapestries, several of which were shown at an exhibition in Stockholm 1909. In the autumn of the same year she joined Isaac Grünewald and other Scandinavians at the Académie Matisse in Paris, where she stayed until the spring of 1911, when Matisse stopped teaching. Hjertén did not participate in the group exhibitions of her Swedish fellow students (»De unga«) in Stockholm in 1909, 1910 and 1911, since only men were allowed to be members. In 1911, however, she published two pioneer articles on the new art in the Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The first (24.2. 1911) discussed »Modern and Eastern Art«, on the occasion of two Paris exhibitions of Chinese painting, while the other (24.9.1911) constituted the first biographical presentation of Cézanne in the Swedish press. The same year Hjertén married the four‐year‐younger Isaac Grünewald, son of a poor Jewish immigrant family in Southern Stockholm. In 1912 they exhibited together in the new group »De åtta« (The Eight), also named »The Expressionists«, led by Grünewald. The term had been adopted from English in the spring of 1911. It was an invention of the famous critic Roger Fry, based on Henri Matisse's manifesto‐like words in »Notes d'un peintre« 1908: »Ce que je poursuis pardessus tout, c'est l'expression«. At the Baltic Exhibition in Malmö in 1914 Hjertén and Grünewald again exhibited in the Swedish group »Expressionisterna«, along with Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Kirchner, Heckel and other expressionists from abroad. The same year Sigrid Hjertén painted her »Self‐Portrait«, now in the Malmö Museum. Sigrid Hjertén chose to depict herself in near profile sitting on a green kitchen chair in the studio, idly painting with her left hand on a canvas outside the picture. She is fashionably dressed in a blue‐green blouse, a long, red skirt and a dashing hat decorated with blue feathers. The slender proportions of her body are strongly exaggerated, in a way that recalls both Italian mannerist painting and the then current Art Nouveau. Her small, flower‐like head is seen against a halolike, semicircular background picture, that can easily be identified as one of Isaac Grünewalds preparatory designs for the decoration of the wedding room in the Stockholm City Law Courts, the competition for which he had just won, without, however, getting the commission. On a sofa in front of the back‐ground picture is sitting a little boy, the son of the young artist couple. His toys fill the empty spaces on the floor and thus complete the strongly decorative composition. The scene is seen from several points of view but mainly from, above. This, together with the oblique, stage‐like planes in the background, creates a spatial effect obviously inspired by old Chinese painting. The colours in the picture are pure and intense, dominated by complementary red and green combined with blue and yellow. The colouring is derived from Matisse and fauvism, while the flat and linear simplification of shapes to a certain degree recalls Matisse's post‐fauve, decorative style from 1907/08 onwards. The small figures in the background picture seem to perform a ritual dance celebrating the »Joy of Life« in a remote and happy land. Together with the gay colouring this forms a somewhat disquieting contrast to the main figure's melancholy espression, which conveys a feeling of conflict between her two rôles as mother and professional artist. Sigrid Hjertén has portrayed herself as a hyper‐sensitive, very feminine woman, in some ways reminiscent of Marie Laurencin's paintings. Her personality found its stabilizing counterpart in Isaac Grünewald's robust sensualism and fighting spirit. Together they were the leaders of the Swedish avant‐garde in the war years 1914–1918. In the spring of 1915 Hjertén and Grünewald were invited to exhibit in the Sturm gallery in Berlin as »Schwedische Expressionisten«, and thus they became close friends of the gallery's leader, Herwarth Walden, and his Swedish wife Nell. Through the Waldens Hjertén and Grünewald also came in close contact with Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter during their stay in Stockholm in the winter of 1915/16. During the war years Hjertén and Grünewald also had several successful, yet controversial, exhibitions in Copenhagen and Christiania (Oslo) and made a strong impression particularly on young Danish artists. Increasing mental tension manifested itself in Hjerténs paintings like »The Red Blind«, 1916. Her post‐war life took a tragic turn, as she gradually succumbed to a mental illness from which she never recovered. In contrast to this, her husband Isaac Grünewald gained position as the foremost artist in Sweden and professor at the Royal Academy.