Olle Baertling (Swedish, 1911-1981)

Currency trader turned modern artist, Olle Baertling’s one-time hobby would eventually earn him the adulation of art-world titans, including Donald Judd. A Swede, Baertling was born in Halmsted in 1911 and eventually settled in Stockholm where he entered the banking profession and painted in his spare time. Shortly after the end of World War II, Baertling committed himself further to his art and traveled to Paris where he connected with Fernand Léger, Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin. In 1951, Baertling abandoned his vertical and horizontal linear style, turning instead to the oblique. The present work, Oradalki, exhibits this open form style. His use of acute angles and penetrating linear forms and shapes became the hallmarks of the artist’s mature work. Baertling’s take on postwar European Modernism found admirers across the globe, including in the United States where he would have seventeen solo exhibitions before his death in 1981.