Komp 11 (Komposition 11/Composition 11)

Swedish artist Thea Ekström was a pioneering painter in the post-war period who, early on, met with international acclaim. Following her 1960 debut solo exhibition, in an unassuming gallery in Stockholm, for example, she was quickly picked up by Galerie Raymond Cordier in Paris, who included her in a group exhibition the following summer. This would become the beginning of an international career that saw Ekström exhibited around the world alongside colleagues such as Öyvind Fahlström (1928-1976, legendary and productive Swedish multimedia artist, author, and poet, working in many genres, often dealing with political and social issues) and Olle Bærtling (1911-1981, Swedish abstract painter and sculptor). By the early 1980s, however, Ekström’s artistic journey came to a slight halt (due to illness), and her distinctive and unique surrealist oeuvre gradually fell, more or less, into obscurity, following her death in 1988.

In the 2021 exhibition catalogue Party for Öyvind (Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm/Museum Tinguely, Basel/Kunstverein, Hamburg), curators Barbro Schultz Lundestam and Gunnar Lundestam touch upon this fact (in the article ‘Thea Ekström’): ‘Two Swedish artists had very successful exhibitions in Paris at a Cordier gallery, kick-starting their international careers. One is now world famous, Öyvind [Fahlström], the other [Ekström] is today a virtually, certainly internationally, unknown female painter. How did that happen?’.

The answer to that question remains open, and one can, regrettably, only conclude that Ekström, for various reasons (like many other female artists), has been unjustly marginalised by art history. With the exception of an exhibition at Prince Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm (Thea Ekström, 2 February - 25 March 1998), it would consequently take some time (too long according to many people…) before the general public ‘rediscovered’ her fascinating personal take on surrealist painting.

In recent years, however, a handful of significant efforts have contributed to restoring Ekström’s art to its rightful place in postwar art history. One of these was the travelling exhibition Thea Ekström (Kristianstads konsthall, Kristianstad, Sweden; Halmstad County Museum, Halmstad, Sweden; and Västerås Art Museum, Västerås, Sweden) in 2007-2008. In her review of the exhibition in Kristianstad, Carolina Söderholm wrote (in ‘Kristianstads konsthall: Thea Ekström’, Kristianstadsbladet, 25 October 2007): ‘With this comprehensive exhibition, the art history of the 1960s and 1970s, in which she has so far been given a negligible place, can -and must- be rewritten. The exhibition is already planned to travel to Halmstad and Västerås. I hope there are more prospective exhibitors willing to put on this show. To miss out on the experience of such an artist is nothing but pure loss.’

Another exhibition, in this context, was the, aforementioned, thematic group exhibition Party for Öyvind, at Sven-Harrys konstmuseum, Stockholm, 2021 (later travelling to Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland and Kunstverein, Hamburg, Germany in 2022), which included Ekström’s work alongside long-acclaimed artists such as Andy Warhol (1928–1987, American visual artist and leading figure in the pop art movement, considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century), Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002, French painter, assembly artist, sculptor, performance artist, and filmmaker, widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors), Öyvind Fahlström, Barbro Östlihn (1930 - 1995, celebrated Swedish artist) and Ulla Wiggen (born 1942, Swedish painter known for her 1960s images depicting electronic circuitry and schematic diagrams, who later switched to portraits before experiencing a comeback in more recent years with her intriguing depictions of human anatomy in the form of irises etc).

The third, and significantly most important, effort consisted of the donation that Mjellby Art Museum, in Halmstad, Sweden, received from Ekström’s grandchildren a couple of years later (in 2023). This material (some 300 works of art, sketches, diaries, journals, letters and photographs, etc) laid the foundation for the most recent exhibition, Thea Ekström, Tonsäker surrealism (Mjellby Art Museum, 7 September 2024 - 4 May 2025), and the accompanying catalogue, Thea Ekström. Dissonance, Harmony, Surrealism, compiled by Linda Fagerström (associate professor of art history and visual studies at Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden).

The Mjellby exhibition opened to great acclaim, and art critic Staffan Bengtsson (born 1955) probably reflected public opinion when he wrote the following in his review (‘Thea Ekström. Outsider bland de stora’, Konstguiden, 12 September 2024): ‘In short, it is a retrospective that I have been looking forward to for many years and, as far as Thea Ekström is concerned, so incredibly well deserved. Yes, here we have an artist who, after a time in diaspora, will find her way back to the big international art scene; I am convinced of that’.

Komp 11 in the collections of Firestorm Foundation bears all the hallmarks of Ekström’s distinctive painterly style that once again is garnering praise for its unique qualities. The painting, like many of her other works, is executed in mixed media on masonite, with black incised/carved lines creating patterns on the surface. Ekström’s paintings have often been described as defined by carved lines and signs (well-known from paganism and other cultures) in the form of celestial bodies, suns, moons, and snakes. In the late 1950s, she also started developing an abstract visual language based on rhythmic lines and pattern-based geometric shapes. She thus gradually created her own alphabet of signs, with symbols and figures inspired by hieroglyphics and other early written languages.

In his foreword to the exhibition catalogue 12 Swedish Painters (travelling exhibition, touring sixteen cities in the U.S.A.), 1962-1963, Swedish art historian Carlo Derkert (1915-1994) wrote about how ’Thea Ekström is an outsider who only recently aroused interest with her white, silent pictures’ with a ‘sign language reminiscent of Sámi art from the north of Sweden.’ Ekström’s art was indeed influenced by Sámi art but also by early Viking rock carvings and symbols from the Romani culture (which she encountered whilst temporarily working in a Romani fairground).

What sets Komp 11 apart from the majority of Ekström’s paintings, however, is the actual overall lack of these mysterious symbols and signs. The rectangular and almost monochrome horizontal composition verges on complete abstraction with its lack of identifiable symbols. The composition thus has strong links to one of Ekström’s most celebrated works, (the vertical) Popplar/Poplars (1958, mixed media on masonite, 91.5 x 60.5 cm, NMB 1798, also known as Komposition 30/Composition 30), famously acquired by Moderna Museet, Stockholm at Ekström’s debut solo exhibition (Lilla Paviljongen, Stockholm, May 1960). To have a work acquired by such a prestigious institution, at a debut exhibition no less, was certainly no mean feat, or as Linda Fagerström puts it (in Thea Ekström. Dissonance, Harmony, Surrealism, exhibition catalogue, Mjellby Art Museum, Halmstad, Sweden, 2024): ‘-undoubtedly, a great achievement for a first-time artist and also clear confirmation of Ekström’s artistic ability.

The 1960 debut was not just a temporary isolated success, but it rapidly and decisively changed Ekström’s life in a short period of time, suddenly establishing her as a successful painter. Given her prolific production in the decades to follow it’s worth highlighting the fact that Komp 11 is a rarity, belonging to her early production, that was painted in the very year, or so, that preceded her defining debut solo exhibition (an exact date is hard to pinpoint given the fact that the work is dated twice: 1959 verso but,also 1960 on the front).

These early works would pave the way for Ekström’s well-deserved success internationally in the following years. Preceded by a 1961 group show at Galerie Raymond Cordier, well situated at 27, rue Guénégaud in Paris, her follow-up solo exhibition at the same gallery in 1962 was a well-attended success. Ekström was launched as the ‘painter who tattoos her paintings’ and the opening night attracted visitors like French Prime Minister (later also President) Georges de Pompidou (1911-1974), who bought two paintings for his private collection, and world-renowned artist Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985, French painter and sculptor of the École de Paris/School of Paris whose idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called ‘low art’, eschewing traditional standards of beauty in favour of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement art brut), who also acquired works by Ekström for his Musée de l’Art Brut.

Signed and dated (lower right corner): Ekström 1960.

Also inscribed, dated and signed (verso): ‘Komp 11 febr. 1959 Thea Ekström’.

Provenance

Auktionshuset Kolonn, Sundbyberg, Sweden, Kvinnliga konstnärer och formgivare, 21 November 2021, lot 1941461.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above sale).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation