Olle (Bertil Georg) B?rtling

(b Halmstad, 6 Dec 1911; d Stockholm, 2 May 1981). Swedish painter and sculptor. He began as an amateur artist, inspired by Matisse and van Gogh, before going to Paris in 1948, where he was a pupil of Andr? Lhote and Fernand L?ger. In 1947 he had travelled to England and made increasingly abstract city sketches, and in 1949 exhibited at the Samlaren Gallery in Stockholm. His Concretist style was long considered to have been appreciated chiefly by art theorists. He produced purely abstract work c. 1950. The similarities between B?rtling's paintings and Op art include simultaneous contrasts and after-images. His contacts with, among others, Auguste Herbin and Victor Vasarely were of great importance to him. Known as 'the creator of the open form', from 1954 he developed a strongly dynamic way of working with clean areas enclosed by black diagonal lines; all the areas extend to the edges of the picture and seem to continue out into space (e.g. Iru, 1958; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.). In his sculptures the black diagonals were transformed into thin steel rods interacting with space and volume (e.g. YZE, 1978; Liding?, Millesg?rden). B?rtling also frequently collaborated with architects such as David Helld?n (1905-90), and his concrete pictorial language and colour system were especially well suited to Helld?n's buildings (e.g. entrance to the first H?torgshus, Stockholm, 1959-60). He took part in numerous international exhibitions and also wrote about his work.

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