artist: Elvine Osterman (Swedish 1908-1997)
medium: oil on canvas
dimensions: 32 x 40 cm canvas / 52 1/2 x 60 1/2 cm framed size (approx)
signed
circa 1940s/50s
presented in its original frame
AU $2150 (approx US $1420 / 1210 EUROS / 209,000 yen / 1055 GBP - for exact current conversion visit xe.com)
artist biography
Elvine Selma Osterman was born 28 February, 1908 in Vänersborg. She was a Swedish visual artist and sculptor.
After attending the Higher School of Arts and Crafts (Slöjdföreningens högre yrkesskola), Osterman studied at the Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg from 1927 to 1930, where her teacher was Tor Bjurström. She thus belonged to the same generation of Bjurström-inspired “Gothenburg Colourists” as Ivan Ivarson, Åke Göransson, Inge Schiöler, and Ragnar Sandberg. Her painting shares many traits with theirs, while at the same time expressing a wholly independent, distinctly feminine temperament.
Her West Coast landscapes, mostly from Tjörn, and her figure paintings reveal a colourism of a lighter, more luminous kind than that of her contemporaries—“a sun-filled, colour-translucent softness breathing freshness, vegetative calm, and a humble affirmation of life” (Emmy Melin in Arbetaren, 30 November 1951). The essence of her painting lay above all in its powerful light intensity, combined with sensitively modulated, painterly expressiveness. During the 1950s she turned increasingly toward a more rhythmically animated pictorial movement, particularly in a series of dance motifs that expanded her formal and expressive range. Her drawings also hold an important place in her production, marked by painterly depth of black, including portraits of friends and children.
Osterman undertook study trips to Germany and Italy. She held solo exhibitions in Copenhagen (1935), Olsen’s Konstsalong, Gothenburg (1945, 1947), Skövde (with W. Sjölander, 1947), Modern konst i hemmiljö, Stockholm (1951), Galleri Aveny, Gothenburg (1952), Killbergs Konstsalong, Helsingborg (1952), and Lorensbergs Konstsalong, Gothenburg (1959). Among numerous group exhibitions, she participated in the touring exhibition “Västsvenskt landskap” arranged by the National Association for Fine Arts, as well as in exhibitions organised by the Helsingborg Art Association and the Landskrona Art Association.
She was a member of the National Association of Swedish Artists (Konstnärernas Riksorganisation) and the Gothenburg Artists’ Club. Her works are represented in the Vikingsberg Art Museum, Helsingborg Museum, Gothenburg Museum and Landskrona Museum.
In 1933 she married the actor Yngve Axel Nordwall. She is the mother of actor Gurie Nordwall and set designer Akke Nordwall. She passed away at the age of 89 on 7 August, 1997 in Gothenburg.