Arvid Fougstedt
Listen
Read
“Gerda, Erik och Donatello” is one of Arvid Fougstedt’s greatest paintings. It is easy to think it is a large colour photograph when first looking at it. It is, however, an oil on canvas painting and not quite so realistic as one might think. All the things we see do not exist in reality in that room, in the flat on Heleneborgsgatan in Stockholm, in which the artist placed his family and himself.
Gerda sits in the middle of the picture in a monk chair. Erik, who is eighteen and will one day be an artist himself, is standing beside her. On the left, there is a porcelain vase and a sculpture, a reduced copy of 15th Century sculptor Donatello’s “David and Goliath”. In the background we see the hall of the flat and there, on the wall, a mirror in which we see a reflection of the artist himself. The whole family is indeed present.
It has been said that this painting is one of Swedish 20th Century art’s most thoroughly worked-out room interpretation. We can follow all perspective lines. Everything is given its right place. The colour scale is mole-coloured grey, brown and red-violet which underlines the clarity of the room.
What does the artist want to say with his painting? It has been defined as an artistic testament. The father, the artist, wants to show his son, who is also going to be an artist, the importance of the room’s aesthetic and place for mankind. “The family in the holy room”, someone has said about this painting. It is not by chance that the son’s body posture is similar to that of the sculpture’s David. However, the sculpture has never been placed on the bureau in the room at Heleneborgsgatan. The artist had seen the bronze original in Florence at some time.
To Arvid Fougstedt the rich European art tradition was a life giving source of artistic renewal. Renewal, however, demands the courage to break traditions as Donatello had done through his sculpture. Otherwise, the tradition would loose its vital force. This point of view the artist put forward in the painting – directed to his son Erik, but also to us onlookers.
