English Summary 1-2013

Hallvard Trætteberg, artist and heraldist
by Trond Einar Solberg Indsetviken
Løten is not only the birth place of the world-famous artist Edvard Munch, but has also been the home of several other artists, among them Hallvard Trætteberg, who was born here in 1898. Hallvard Trætteberg is first and foremost known as a heraldist. He designed many national, regional and royal coats of arms. He was also an eminent artist, a true painter. He made use of watercolours throughout his artistic life and his watercolour works are dominated by clear, strong colours. Depictions of animals – especially cows – are to be found in many of his watercolours. Hallvard Trætteberg grew up on a farm, so this motif was familiar to him. From the fifties onwards he worked almost solely with watercolour and his main preoccupation was composition within the picture surface. In the seventies, however, he worked almost solely with movements and motion in the picture surface, not as much the motion of the line as of the form and direction of the surface. How various forms move and influence each other. Just before his death in 1987 he donated “the most and the best” of his works to the municipality of Løten which later founded the Hallvard Trætteberg scholarship. We hope to be able to show a small exhibition of some of Hallvard Trætteberg’s watercolours during the first week of the Nordisk Akvarell 2013 exhibition

Ulla Carlberg
by Jacqueline Stare
Ulla Carlberg’s interest in handicrafts led her to take up painting. She worked as an occupational therapist for many years. She paints primarily pots and buildings, both subjects may lure the imagination of the spectator: what is contained in the pots, hidden from sight, which stories can be told within the buildings, under the roof? Once in a while the craftsman in her is activated: the curiosity, the wish to test different materials to create structure and effects, to make use of things in other ways than were intended, to think that nothing is impossible. I do not detect this playfulness and will to experiment in her watercolours. The results seem obvious as parts of the whole impression and she never seeks spectacular effects. Mostly, the watercolours seem quite peaceful and harmonic. Ulla Carlberg does not consider herself an especially gifted painter – she is a craftsman who is interested in art and has trained her skills. Nevertheless, she has come a long way with this training.

Ryno Frieberg
by Håkan Bull
Gustaf Anton Ryno Frieberg, Ryno for short, is born in 1920 and is still an active artist. He has been nick-named “The Knight of the Rose”, due to his love of painting still-lives with flowers, particularly roses. He is, however, also a prominent portrait and landscape painter. He is mostly renowned for his oil paintings, but since his debut in 1941 he has painted hundreds of watercolours. The first important step in the still-life painting is to arrange the objects before making up the composition with thin drawn lines. Of course he paints flowers from “living models”. Is he a naturalist, realist – or what can he be called? Ryno Frieberg tells me he was not accepted to the Royal Art Academy (Kungliga Kunsthögskolen) in 1940 with the statement that “the academy does not need any romantic artist”. So they found him romantic. When Ryno Frieberg tries to explain his own style of painting he usually quotes the French painter Jean-Baptiste Chardin (1699-1779) “I apply colour until the painting resembles the object”. In my opinion, Ryno Frieberg does much more than that. I would rather make the quotation more complex and say that he applies colour until the painting resembles his idea of the object. If one has to call him anything, we agree it must be a “romantic realist”

Ulrika Wistrand
by Jacqueline Stare
For several years Ulrika Wistrand has concentrated her painting subject on a swimmer – a woman in a bath-house, an important part of her own world, since she goes there every week. Ulrika Wistrand worked in the computer business for a number of years before getting serious health problems with her neck. Even after many operations she can only sit still in the same position for about 15 minutes at a time. She was advised by her doctor to find a hobby and started at her first painting course. In time she became quite engaged in painting. The swimmer is a subject that still has a lot left for her to explore, but I could not imagine her never having painted anything else, so I asked her to show me some of her other works. This surprised her, because nobody else usually wants to see other paintings. She brought forth many other works: self portraits, clowns, women and paintings of her husband and child. She is especially interested in the human body and face and over time she has tried more abstract and experimental ways of painting. I am fascinated by the way Ulrika Wistrand has found a creativity and love of painting from circumstances that could have inhibited her life.

Hans Jørgen Frydendal
by Marianne Gross
As an architect and a furniture designer Hans Jørgen Frydendahl uses painting as a means of relaxing and recharging. Since the mid-eighties he has been on a yearly watercolouring vacation with friends. His main subjects are landscapes and views (harbours, buildings etc). In the beginning they were quite neat and perfect using correct perspective and such, but after a course held by the Austrian painter Bernhard Vogel he found the courage to become more expressive and less naturalistic. He now makes use of very bold colours and deliberately distorted perspectives. However, composition is still essential to him and he uses forms and lines with great awareness. If there are no natural lines in the painting such as cables or riggings, he will make them up. Still it is seldom to see an actual horizon in his paintings. He rather makes use of interesting croppings to give the impression of life outside the picture frame. Now he has brought a partner into the architect company and painting takes up more and more of Hans Jørgen Frydendal’s time. For many years he painted once a year while on holiday – now he meets with painting friends once a week.

Synneva Heradstveit
by Knut Ormhaug
Synneva Heradstveit lets herself be directed by the colours and the underlying value of different colour combinations. Her watercolours are private experiences that challenge our senses and lead us to a poetic conception of life. They are based on nature – not obvious impressions, but fragments of previous experiences. In her paintings these experiences are simplified to abstract forms. The value of the colours and their power of expression become more important than the natural forms that initially inspired her. She creates an interactivity between the natural experience of the artist and her knowledge of the characteristics of the paints. The hues reflect the painter’s moods – these can be light or heavy, cold or warm. These paintings form a creative process where the artist surrenders to the experience and let the colours create a new reality.

Summary by Marianne Gross