glowing landscapes
In Björn Wessman's work, the cold North meets the glowing landscapes of Southern France; regardless of geography, Wessman captures the unique color scale of the place with an inimitable precision that distinguishes one of the great landscape painters of our time.
We are pleased to present lithographs and serigraphs by Björn Wessman, active on the Swedish art scene since the early 1980s and one of the most prominent landscape painters in Sweden today. Throughout his career and through all the shifting trends of art world, Wessman has remained faithful to his motif – nature.
Stygg I and II, inspired by the spectacular ravine around the Stygg rapids in Dalarna, Sweden
Wessman's oeuvre appears as a journey through changing environments and topographies, with inspiration drawn from such disparate place as northern Sweden and Tasmania. Often, however, Wessman does not engage in actual depictions, but rather concentrates of landscapes. Based on photographic material, the essentials in the images are extracted until color and form harmonize, the canvases of the paintings can be stretched and the brushes brought out.
Au bout du chemin och Max nègre, two of Wessman's French landscapes
In his retrospective catalogue Pangea, Wessman writes about his process:
The painting process can be as short as a day
is long, but most often it extends over weeks
and months. The power of painting seems to be beyond
my control and my task is to be present
when the canvas calls to work.
The finished image, the landscape that gradually
spreads out over the white surface, is often taken
from a varied topography.
Parts of our Nordic nature can thus meet
the light-filled lands of the south. The contours of the continents
melt together again after persistent work.
Thus I join disparate parts of our world into
a colorful community in my own Pangea.
Björn Wessman working on his new serigraphs Stygg at Atelier Landberg in Stockholm
Björn Wessman (b. 1949) studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, graduating in 1981. He also has background as a student of literary and his work is often accompanied by text. Wessman is represented in all major Swedish museum collections and his exhibition history is extensive, recently with major exhibitions at Millesgården and Waldemarsudde in Stockholm.
