artist: Harry Booström (Swedish 1917-1996)
medium: pastel on paper
dimensions: 26 1/2 x 21 1/2 cm art size / 37 x 32 cm framed size (approx)
signed
circa late 1940s/early 1950s
presented in its original frame with respainted inner liner and new non-reflective UV glass
Rauks / Raukar - towering limestone rock formations, that can be found along the coastline of Gotland, Sweden. These ancient natural sculptures were formed over millions of years and have become an iconic symbol of the island.
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artist bio
Harry Sixten Booström was born on December 15, 1917 in Guldrupe, Gotland. He was a Swedish painter.
Booström studied under Swedish artist Edward Berggren between 1942 and 1945, followed by a time studying with Isaac Grünewald. He also took study trips to Denmark in 1946 and 47, Belgium and France in 1948 and Tunisia 1949. Booström settled in Stockholm in 1948 and the summers he spent in Gotland, where he grew up. Nature there was his constant source of inspiration.
Booström exhibited regularly throughout his career. Early highlights include exhibitions with Gotlands konstförening (Art Association), in the National Museum’s Unga tecknare (Young Artists), and in the traveling exhibition Konst på papper (Art on Paper). Together with Valentin Andersson, he exhibited at Galleri Samlaren in Stockholm in 1948, and alongside 4 other Gotland artists he showed in the exhibition 5 gotlänningar at De ungas salong in Stockholm. Other notable exhibitions include a Høstudstillingen / Den Frie exhibition in Copenhagen, at Espace in Stockholm, and at Réalités Nouvelles in Paris, In In his report of the exhibition at De Unga, critic Martin Strömberg wrote in Stockholms-Tidningen of Booström's work: "The most radical in the group is Harry Booström, a summary landscape experience arrived at a pure coluor geometry, which works with differently coloured squares in rhythmically decorative compositions on a single-coloured basis. He implements his themes with artistic consistency”.
Among his public works is a mural at Norrbackaskolan in Visby. He was a member of the international Groupe Espace, which worked for expanded collaboration between artists and architects.
Booström worked various mediums including oil, gouache and ink. In the 1950s, he turned to purely non-imaginative, concretist, paintings with basic geometric shapes. In collaboration with the architect Bertil Ahlqvist, he worked on murals to the terraced houses in Visby in the late 1950s, executed in his abstract geometric style.
Examples of his work are held in the public collections of the National Museum in Stockholm, the Moderna Museet, and in Gustaf VI Adolf's (King of Sweden 1950-1973) collection.
He passed away in 1996. A major retrospective exhibition Harry Booström - Avant-garde and Concretist was held in 2015 at the Norrköping Art Museum, curated Kerstin Holme.