Ten by Ten

CFHILL's recurrent exhibition Ten by Ten aim at offering a diverse selection of iconic artworks, from different times and places, highlighting the great leaps in art history. This autumn we proudly present ten pieces that each illustrate important aspects of the rapid artistic development during the extraordinary 20^th century. Created between 1908 and 2018 the selected works, by male as well as female artists, were executed in six different countries spread over two continents. Pieces strong enough to stand alone and yet here they are, placed in dialogue with one another in our gallery. Works by; Gustaf Fjæstad, Sigrid Hjertén, Christian Berg, Pablo Picasso, Antoni Tàpies, Arman, Kenneth Noland, Howard Hodgkin, Andy Warhol and Amoako Boafo.

Gustaf Fjæstad’s Winter Landscape at Racken from 1908, only recently rediscovered after having been in different private German collections for more than 100 years, is probably the earliest known example in Fjæstad’s oeuvre depicting a boat that has been hauled ashore. The boat acts as a reminder of human presence in this otherwise completely barren landscape. A strong case can be made that this painting is the prototype of all the similar compositions that would subsequently engage Fjæstad throughout his career.

Two years later (1910) Sigrid Hjertén, a major artist in Swedish modernism, arrived in Paris. Studying for Henri Matisse she quickly took a keen interest in the possibilities offered by the vibrant colors favored by les Fauves. Another important source of inspiration was the works by Paul Cezanne that she also encountered in Paris. All of this is highly visible in her stunning view from the studio window in The view from Katarinavägen, executed circa 1914.

The dazzling Fauvism that Matisse made popular was soon challenged by competing artistic movements in Paris. Christian Bergbelonged to a circle of young Swedish avant-garde artists who represented functionalist and constructivist ideals in their work. His first mature works in a modern style, executed in 1926 after a period of intensive study in Paris, were close to the ideals of Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. Torpedfigur VI was conceived in 1927, at the very height of Berg’s extraordinary development as a sculptor, and later (1965) carved in Naxian marble on a monumental scale.

Pablo Picasso, regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20^thcentury, is famous for co-founding the Cubist-movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. In this exhibition, he’s represented by a beautiful drawing Mousquetaire, nu et vielle dame from 1970 in which he demonstrates his fascination for Rembrandt.

Antoni Tàpies was associated with different movements such as Art Informel (Europe’s equivalent of Abstract Expressionism in America) and Haute Pâte (or Matter Painting). In the late 1960s, influenced by Pop Art, he started using larger items, such as furniture, in his works. Bois de lit belongs to these remarkable pieces. Executed in 1972 it was exhibited at the prestigious Martha Jackson Gallery in New York the following year. Being neither a painting nor a sculpture Bois de lit forces the viewer to reassess his or her perception of art. “My illusion is to have something to transmit”, Tàpies said in 1990, “If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it.”

Arman is one of the most important and imaginative conceptual artists of the 20^th century. From 1959 to 1962 Arman developed his most recognizable style, beginning with his two most renowned concepts: Accumulations and Poubelles (French for "trash bins"). Accumulations were collections of commonplace and similar objects which he arranged within transparent polyester castings, or within Plexiglas cases.

Arman did not stop with fixing whole objects in place, however. He soon began breaking them. These musical Colères (Tantrums) - the collective name he gave to broken instruments - were made by destroying banjos, guitars, mandolins, violins, cornets or cellos.

Kenneth Noland is considered a primary force in the development of postwar abstract art, especially color field painting. Most of Noland's paintings fall into one of four groups: circles, chevrons, stripes and shaped canvases. During the 1970s and 1980s his shaped canvases were highly irregular and asymmetrical. These resulted in increasingly complex structures of sophisticated and controlled color and surface integrity. Noland removed any representational hints from his paintings as well as any suggestion of what artists call “gesture”, or the obvious movement of the hand or brush across the canvas.

Far, far away on the other end of the spectrum Sir Howard Hodgkin is also regarded as one of the most inventive and original colorists of the 20^th century, only of a different kind compared to Noland. Part of a generation of artists who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 60s, including David Hockney, Peter Blake and Patrick Caulfield, his paintings exist at the margin between representation and abstraction, bright mosaics shot through with hints and glimmerings of recognizable form. It may not be obvious to the viewer but the works always has a subject and they are not abstract – he said that he had never painted an abstract picture in his life, that he was a  figurative painter of emotional situations”.

Andy Warhol’s portraits of the 1970s also display a new interest in painterly painting. Maria Luisa de Romans was painted in 1974, the very year in which Warhol seems to have relished the tension at the edges between the printed image and the painted background, intensifying his brushwork and finger painting in these transitional passages. Warhol often added calligraphic flourishes to his paintings by running his extended forefinger through the wet acrylic paint - he wore a rubber glove – to create zigzagged and hatched lines along the contours of his sitters, often scraping through the top layer of color to reveal the underlying hue. This is particularly apparent in Maria Luisa de Romans, a stunning portrait that radiates warmth from the cadmium red background on top of which Warhol has used a blue screen.

Another celebrated practitioner of finger painting is Amoako Boafo. No other artist has so quickly achieved iconic status within the contemporary art world in recent years as Boafo, born in Ghana and educated in Vienna with Egon Schiele as one of his role models. His portrait, Grace, from 2018 is a testimony to how figurative painting has returned, with a vengeance, to the contemporary art scene. The portrait also brings the exhibition to a fittingly logical conclusion in going, practically, full circle back to the realist style of Fjæstad’s winter landscape, executed 110 years earlier in another part of the world.

Welcome to Ten by Ten