Inger Ekdahl
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Inger Ekdahl’s painting entitled Painting I from 1959 is an example of what was considered bold contemporary art in the 1950’s.
Young American contemporary artists’ work, among others Jackson Pollock, had been exhibited at Liljevalch’s Gallery in 1953 and inspired many Swedish artists. When Pollock painted he let the paint run and drip on the canvas. Sometimes he mixed sand etcetera in the paint. He often worked with the picture lying on the floor so he could move around it from all sides.
New ideas and impulses in visual arts came from USA on the other side of the Atlantic during the post World War II period. Paris was no longer the centre of art. Jackson Pollock’s work has no doubt inspired Inger Ekdahl to let her paint run and drip on the canvas, but her pictures are different than Pollock’s. She seeks balance and harmony instead of the strong outwardly directed power in the colours and forms found in Pollock and other Swedish artists inspired by him at the time.
In later years when writing about Inger Ekdahl’s paintings and sketches from the 50’s, one has called them informal, because colours and forms often build patterns similar to calligraphic writing. The paintings have also been described as spontaneous colour-field painting. Her way of working is instead carefully executed and time consuming. Her work became more and more likened to “lattice”, a word that means grating, and that she herself used sometimes to describe the regular grating/lattice-like pattern of parallel lines and points in her work. The 1950’s were a creative and experimental time for Inger Ekdahl.
