LOCATION AND COLOUR
On a trip to Gotland in 1892, Ivan Aguéli decides to paint a billowing landscape near Visby. He uses pale, milky colours to convey the light on the island, presaging modernism in both his palette and forms. Sigrid Hjertén and Isak Grünewald move to Katarinavägen in Stockholm in 1913. The following year they rent a large studio high up in the same block. When Sigrid Hjertén in 1915 looks out of the window, Stadsgården is directly below. In a dynamic composition, she captures the urban bustle in bright colouring with boats, railroad tracks, and harvest machines. With her choice of colours and modern style, Hjertén breaks new ground in her painting. Isak Grünewald’s portrait of his son Iván is also painted in 1915. We see him leaning against the red armchair, as if in a world of his own. Grünewald conveys this by painting a cooler blue “thought bubble” around his head and upper body. The influences from Henri Matisse and his The Red Studio from 1911 are obvious. The red walls in the painting indicate a new way of seeing, rather than depicting the colour of the studio walls in real life. Aguéli, Hjertén and Grünewald have all chosen places they knew well and give them new meaning through the choice of colour and shape.
Eric Magassa places a cloth figure and a paper mask in a street in The Lost Series Detroit, USA (2018). Like a shaman, the figure in contrasting colours stands out against the setting. African masks are a recurring theme in Magassa’s works. He twists and turns the perspectives, exploring, say, Pablo Picasso’s appropriation and use of West African masks in his art in the early 1900s. Ikram Abdulkadir portrays her sister in muted colours, her veil fluttering in the wind and obscuring her face. The focus of the photograph is on the background. Abdulkadir often uses familiar places and people who are close to her. The title of the work, Dabeesha, means “wind” in Somali.
