artist: Bertel Bertel-Nordström (Finnish/Swedish 1884-1967)
medium: oil on canvas
dimensions: 41 1/2 x 33 1/2 cm canvas size / 50 1/2 x 42 1/2 cm frame size (approx)
signed
circa 1950s/60s
presented in its original liner frame
AU $875 (approx US $570 / 490 EUROS / 87,000 yen / 430 GBP - for exact current conversion visit xe.com)
artist bio
Gustav Adolf Engelbert Bertel-Nordström was born on 19 April 1884 in Helsinki. He was Finnish-Swedish painter, draughtsman, and later also active as a sculptor.
Bertel-Nordström began his career as an office clerk but was soon engaged as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in both Finland and Sweden. He was self-taught as an artist and undertook study trips to Copenhagen, Paris, Dresden, Munich, Florence and Venice. Since 1915 he was based mainly in Stockholm and along the west coast of Sweden (Båstad and Hov’s Hallar).
He moved from his native Finland to Sweden in 1914 and first exhibited in Stockholm in 1915 and participated in numerous group exhibitions as well as several solo shows. He was an active member of the Optimistgruppens (Optimist Group) of artists. An athlete and former wrestler himself, he was one of the founders of the association Konsten i sporten (“Art in Sport”) and served as its chairman from 1943 to 1946. He was also commissioner for the Swedish art exhibition at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Bertel-Nordström became a member of the Swedish Artists’ Association in 1933 and was also affiliated with the National Council of Artists.
Bertel-Nordström was a romantic painter of powerful temperament, whose art was imbued with lyrical pathos. In some respects he continued the national romantic tradition begun by the Konstnärsförbundet’s “blue painters” of the 1890s, while his depictions of coastal landscapes and cliffs also drew upon the heritage of Marcus Larson’s dramatic painting. His style, however, remained distinctly personal. As Ragnar Josephson wrote: “His depiction of Stockholm’s heights in the snow of early spring, with the lights twinkling along the slopes, possesses a penetrating depth and icy clarity that no longer recalls his predecessors.” His strong sense of colour, once vigorous and forceful, evolved over the years into a finer and more resonant harmony. His palette was dominated by blue and green tones, and his bizarre clown figures and dramatic portraits added to a highly individual and unsentimental oeuvre.
He also painted stage designs, including those for Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse and Frank Wedekind’s Erdgeist. As a sculptor, Bertel-Nordström made his debut in Falun in 1951 with an exhibition of around ten portrait and figure studies in terracotta and bronze.
Examples of his work are held in the collections of the National Museum in Stockholm, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Art Museum, Malmö Museum, Jämtlands Museum, Norrköpings Museum and Ataneum in Helsinki.
He was married twice - first from 1917 to 1928, to the sculptor Gertrud Paulina Ninnan Santesson, and second, from 1934 to 1939, to the singer Alice Margareta Högfors.
Bertel-Nordström passed away in Stockholm at the age of 83 on August 22, 1967.