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Vicke Lindstrand – modernist with a superb sense for material
| |  | | | | Foto: JimDavis Labs |
”His register is greater than that of any other Swedish glass artist,” is the conclusion of author and former Director and art historian Dag Widman, writing in the jubilee book for the 250th Anniversary of the Kosta Glassworks in 1992. Victor ”Vicke” Lindstrand was brought to Orrefors in 1928 when he was only 24 years old in order to complement the perfectly matched set of Gate and Hald in preparing for the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition. Since then his ”brilliance and experimental focu" has set indelible marks in Swedish design of the 20th century and has ”contributed greatly to the new Ariel and Mykene techniques, while giving engraved glass new character.-- His glass was excitingly fresh and expressively vital, ”opines Dag Widman,” even if he never attained the same level when he was at Kosta.”
| |  | | | | Foto: Sten RobËrt |
The title Vicke Lindstrand held most dear was the name artist, though he still had all the characteristics of a great designer – he was energetic, curious, experimentally oriented, industrious, sensitive to trends, a pioneer and financially aware of the importance of production factors to income and commercial possibilities. The early 1930s when functionalism was breaking through in Sweden were difficult years for commerciality and the new style. Modern objects were not yet sufficiently popular and profitable. Helmut Ricke, the foremost international expert on Swedish glass, wrote in 1987 that ”the difficult years after 1930 called for innovation and compromises” and adds that ”Vicke Lindstrand reacted most flexibly, able to blend the artistís task with modern design work without problems”.
Used or misused, the concept modernist has perhaps seldom fitted so well for any active Swedish artist as it did for Vicke Lindstrand. Already as a child he drew everything that came in his way, a game with pen and pencil. He was born November 27, 1904, into a family of artisans in Göteborg. The family was exceedingly musical and Victorís special bass voice graced the German Church both as a choirboy and as a substitute choir director. His great musicality inspired him throughout life – he played the lute and had a grand piano in all his homes on which he entertained family and friends. However, his self-criticism cut a musical career short. Since he felt that his own talent wasnít enough to be among the best, he abstained altogether. As a young man all his waking hours were used for drawing. He lost his first job as a bookbinding trainee when it was discovered that pen and paper were more important to him than the book binding craft. So, in 1918–19, he attended the Sloyd Association day and night courses in advertising drawing and studied guitar, lute and piano at the same time.
This musicality has left traces in the motifs and patterns used for all his materials over the years – there are lutes, singers, dancers and jazzy rhythms in a never-ceasing stream, all interwoven and applied to his glass, ceramics, textiles, theatre decorations, paintings and sculptures. His fecund pen supported him well and enabled a productivity few can surpass in terms of number of objects and of larger Swedish and international projects carried out simultaneously. It displayed a capacity scarcely exceeded even when compared to other Swedish artists of the same period. ”I stand entranced listening to this man tell of his work, gaining confirmation of what I have earlier sensed, that here before me is a person who has been amazingly active and productive and who has completed what few are given to complete in a whole life,” writes Lars Thor, author of Legend in Glass. In talking of his own productivity, Vicke has said that ”being an artist is both a blessing and a curse. You can never leave it, never put it aside for a minute. Most people have their work and their leisure hours. I can never post a sign saying: I lay eggs from nine and five.” Perhaps the goal was to íbe approvedí by his earthy, religious parents, who drove him to seek the apex, even as a teenager? Every week the young man paid his mother for room and board and according to Lars Thor, he actually managed to earn enough doing ”everything from painting signs to working for the large, Göteborg papers”.
After a while even the media mature Vicke Lindstrand stated in interviews that ”it isnít the profitability, itís the joy of working that matters”. Certainly he felt the whip to produce when, as artistic leader of the ceramic art industry at Upsala-Ekeby and Karlskrona Porcelain Factory and later during 23 years of doing the same job at Kosta Glassworks, ”holding the works up” with a steady stream of models, everyday glassware and pioneering art glass. Of his role at Upsala-Ekeby during the 1940s, we have learned that ”he was extremely active in the production himself, collaborating closely with the craftsmen. And he worked amazingly fast. It seemed he had no problems doing a sculpture before breakfast. But then he had thought about it and knew what he wanted,” says Ingrid Atterberg.
What came to characterise Vicke Lindstrand above all others was his unrivalled ability to find new, technical solutions, applying, according to Dag Widman, ”an indisputable capacity for ingenuity”. In an overview of Scandinavian utility art, an American journalist wrote: ”He is an artist with endless energy and inspiration, and with expert technical knowledge of his material. He likes effects that are unusual and free in form, asymmetrical as against any classic shapes. Lindstrand also does painting, ceramics, and poster design, but seems to find his greatest inspiration with glass. In design thinking, he is entirely unfettered by any tradition.” – indeed a judgement that is as true now as when it was written thirty years ago.
In the magnificent volume titled World Design published in 2000, Vicke Lindstrandís international stature is emphasised in the presentation: ”He was the first to work on equal terms alongside Edward Hald and Simon Gate, the legendary creators of the Swedish Style, and he was well known for his close collaboration with the glassblowers. Not surprisingly, water and people were among the subjects he represented. For instance, his vase the íPearl Diverí (1931/1935) was a powerful composition in the Art Deco style. But he also created monumental works such as the fountains for the Swedish pavilion of the 1939 New York World Fair.”
The great, decisive event for his life was meeting the internationally renowned Simon Gate at the 1928 Industrial Exhibition in Jönköping. At 24, Vicke was there to decorate a frieze, becoming a glass artist by chance, so to say! The two giants Gate and Hald at the Orrefors Glassworks needed reinforcement. They had already achieved some of the centuryís unrivalled successes with their art. Their international breakthrough came in Paris 1925 with gold medals for everyone, artists, masters and the works as a whole. They had received prestige assignments such as the light fittings and mirrors for the Concert Hall in Stockholm, the luxury liner the M/S Kungsholm and participation in the first Swedish glass exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1927. An endless paean of critical acclaim was theirs. But now a general mobilisation in architecture and art industry was announced with furniture and utility art at stage centre. The thought was that the new signals from Europe ought to be manifested on Swedish terms. Bauhaus and streamlined functionalism called for an answer, which was the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition.
After ten years as a graphics artist, the drawer and decorator was ready to take off. He quickly understood that glass was a material that needed to be mastered. His entire focus was applied to learning everything about glass. Vicke was amazingly curious or hungry, as we say today. He understood that it was vital to establish a profile apart from his older colleagues, to create his own platform, preferably using hitherto unused technical solutions. This early love of and experimental desire with glass would follow him for the rest of his life, becoming something of a cornerstone for his long career. He chose as his personal technique to paint plastic, lively, modernistic designs on a matt surface. The series for which he received proper attention comprised 17 varied shapes with free, sweeping lines and ties to Matisse and for that matter, to Gr¸newald. There he was, only 26 years old and still seen as a natural part of an artistic collective with colleagues named Simon Gate and Edward Hald. The greatest attention was afforded a female face with shyly downcast eyes, full, seemingly kissable lips and applied, green vertical handles in the shape of falling, curling hair. All Lindstrand items from the 1930ís collection are today among Swedenís modernistic treasures fetching increasingly higher prices at auctions. The Swedish Artist Lexicon tells us that ”Lindstrandís early glass art is noted for a strict, though luxurious collaboration between heavy crystal glass and vigorous, unified engraving. The most common subjects are water and music.”
According to Dag Widman, Lindstrandís breakthrough came in 1931. However, glass historian Helmut Ricke thinks the artist had his own style from day one. He enters the stage as an artist ”with a sure feel for moods and trends. The idiom is easy to understand and straight forward”. Above all it the possibilities inherent in engraving that raises both Lindstrand and Orrefors, using both the front and the back of the vas or object to create stereoscopic depth. In the Pearl Divers he creates the illusion of water.
The thick-walled, wavy surface is perfect for glass as a material. The subject with muscular men diving through the water was right for the times – according to Helmut Ricke, Ewald Dahlskog at Kosta and many other, European artists were working with the theme ”Eros and struggle”. This was not only true of art, but of politics during that period. It was time to depart from Haldís and Gateís celebration of woman towards more brutal action. There is an urn with a cover shaped like an octopus in the National Art Museum where we see men swimming in streaming water. This magnificent object was the centerpiece at the large, 1996 glass exhibition titled The Brilliance of Swedish Glass at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. In the Orrefors Jubilee Book, Dag Widman opines that with that piece Vicke Lindstrand stepped from utility objects to free sculpture.
| |  | | | | Foto: Arkiv, Smålands Museum |
The 1930s were a hectic period. New techniques developed at a fantastic pace – Ariel appeared in 1936, developed with Edvin Öhrström and the legendary master Gustaf Bergkvist, as well as Vickeís own carborundum technique named Mykene. A handsomely shaped ice bucket made in 1932–33 in an American, streamlined, industrial style drew attention and in fact still made at Orrefors, though in a slightly modified form. His collaboration in decorating the Göteborg Concert Hall in 1935 was one of the high points. In Paris in 1937 Lindstrand created a theme called Technology and Future Window for the exterior of the Swedish Pavilion, engraving it himself. In music terminology, the decade moved in a crescendo.
His faith in the future and celebrations of the new era culminated in the 1939 Worldís Fair in New York where he shaped the Monumental Fountain in the form of a surrealistic tree created using glued glass sheets. It was three metres tall and weighed six tons! Then Vicke Lindstrand went west, appearing at the Golden Gate Exhibition in San Francisco the same year where he was spotted walking by the fountain which had by then become the curiosity of the Swedish Pavilion. Gustaf Näsström writes in his article titled 1939, that ”Ö on inauguration evening May 5, while ladies and gentlemen in magnificent formal dress cooled themselves in its cool glitter under a spring sky tinged with saturated, southern blue, the fountainís creator was seen wandering melancholically among his artist colleagues.” Perhaps the 35-year old sensed that his life was to make a radical turn soon.
What Näsström and the others did not know was that the hope for the future at Orrefors had chosen to resign to begin a new life in America and New York. There were offers. But in August the Second World War broke out, all ports including Portugalís were closed to passenger traffic and Vicke Lindstrand was forced to stay in Sweden. He had signed an agreement not work with glass design for the next ten years, which is why he was quickly appointed artistic leaders at Upsala-Ekeby. Once there, he was certainly íusefulí, developing his brilliant design style in the animal world. He possessed a zoologistís intuition for how animals moved and just as before, he often modelled his works himself before meeting with the craftsmen.
He had and remained a close friend to the craftsmen. Flexible and generous as he was, there was a mutual respect. On the other hand, everything spoken and written sometimes suggests a more ambiguous relationship to his fellow artists. Perhaps it was behaviour sharpened by a certain performance anxiety and ego centrism, characteristics that certainly are not unusual when great artists share the scene.
For we are indeed talking about a scene and a dynamic entertainer with great successes over a 50-year career. When he collaborated with the Swedish textile pioneer Elsa Gullberg in landing the prestigious assignment to design the curtain for the Malmö City Theatre, Helena Dahlbäck Lutteman wrote in the National Art Museumís 1989 catalogue titled Elsa Gullberg – textile pioneer: ”Vicke Lindstrand drew superbly decorative patterns, though perhaps he was a bit ahead of his time since they were hard to sell.” But the Malmö curtain from 1944 became a much admired masterpiece, at 8.5 x 32 metres the largest decorative textile print work created in Sweden.
Given a new chance to work with glass, he chose the competitor Kosta, becoming an artistic leader of great integrity. He avoided the Orrefors top-of-the-line such as Graal and Ariel, choosing instead to continue development of new techniques in close collaboration with master engraver Bengt Heintze, a seventh generation glassblower at the works, and master engraver Rune Strand. Testimonials were important to Kosta and customers included kings and presidents, as well as the Swedish government. One much discussed gift was an optical, prismatic structure celebrating Brasilia, the new capital of Brazil. No fewer than four master engravers were involved in creating a base of jungle animals from which skyscrapers reached for the sky.
Exhibitions followed one another – Paris in 1951 and the glass-roofed loggia at the Nordiska Kompanietís Stockholm store (NK) where he presented Trees in a fog for the first time, perhaps the best known vase from Kosta ever! His now well-known ability of letting the decor wander round the object to tell an autonomous story while keeping attention on the refractive character of glass came to the fore at Copenhagen in 1953. The objects in this style include Woman hanging wash, Smelling fish, Drying nets, a herd of elegantly drawn giraffes running over the savannah (1965) and many more, both everyday and exotic subjects.
Vicke Lindstrand was as comfortable in Sweden as he was internationally – London in 1954, H55 and others in 1955, NK, New York and the Milan Triennial in 1957. In New York he showed more than 200 objects, occasioning the New York Times to exclaim that it is ”characteristic of Lindstrand that he knows his medium so well, he succeeds in exceeding its limitations.”
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In 1959 the Lund Art Museum mounted a large retrospective that summed up Lindstrandís glorious artistic exhalation during the 50s and his feel for current trends. He clearly understood what the general public wanted, while remaining unconstrained and pioneering. He collaborated with Bruno Mathsson in designing the new exhibit hall at Kosta in 1956, while developing Swedenís most sought after testimonials in the form of great, massive green glass pieces. íPeopledí with engravings of polar bears and other animals by Rune Strand, these were enormously appreciated by all.
The years thereafter with glass art were a satisfying journey with much admiration along the way. While he continued to design utility glass such as the Melodi and Mambo services, with what some suggest is a clear relationship to Finnish glass and the design language of the day. However, it was his monumental, ”Legend in Glass” sculptures using sheets of plate glass that drew the most interest. Made in Stuttgart, Norrköping, Umeå and Växjö, the sheets were glued using a unique technique. ”It seems his urge to experiment is without limitations,” enthused the Handels- och Sjöfartstidning, one of the daily papers in Göteborg where his career had once begun.
The last decade encompassed a rich interchange with Hanne Dreutler and Arthur Zirnsack, a true glass couple who had chosen to build their own glassworks in Åhus. ”Vicke motivated us, sending constant vibrations our way in spite of the long distance between Kosta and Åhus.”
Vickeís artistic heritage is held in trust in a number of different places, such as the industrial museums at Orrefors and Kosta, the National Art Museum in Stockholm and the Röhss Museum in Göteborg, as well as in many international museums and collections including the foundation set up before his wife Marianne Lindstrand passed away. The Studio Glass Works in Åhus are open year round and have made space for several hundred objects, including many paintings, glass from every period and a number of sculptures. At this moment, the Lindstrand Foundation is gathering strength for the 100th Anniversary of Vicke Lindstrandís birth. The plans are to make this a genuine celebration of one of our foremost, 20th century artists.
Margareta Artéus Thor
Editor/EDI, CultureAndDesign
margareta.arteus@cultureanddesign.com
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Publicerat 2005-01-27 av Sebastian Löfvall
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