Shipping Sweden-Madrid: Pieces of Memory

M A R I A N A

L A Í N

C L A Ë S S O N

Shipping Sweden-Madrid:

Pieces of Memory English translation (Svensk översättning på baksidan)

For this exhibition I have compiled a series of paintings inspired in the family’s summerhouse in Färgenäs, Hemsjö, outside Alingsås. It is not an anthology but a broad selection. In Shipping Sweden-Madrid: Pieces of Memory, in the showroom of the Main Post Office building in Madrid, you will find my childhood’s summer reminiscences that explain the Swedish influence in a great part of my work.

Oficina Principal de Correos de Madrid - Palacio de Comunicaciones Paseo del Prado 1, 28014 Madrid Inauguration on Thursday 7th of June, 2018, at 7:00 pm From 7th - 30th June, 2018. Opening hours: Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 8:30 pm. Saturdays from 8:30 am to 2:00 pm

Shipping Sweden-Madrid: Pieces of Memory The exhibition shows the Swedish influence in a great part of my work and how the cultural contrasts between Spain and Sweden have been important for my personal and artistic evolution. The Vuela Pluma Ediciones art gallery in Madrid showed a smaller version in May 2017.

The summers of my childhood, full of colours, with the saturated light after rain that you can observe in Nordic artists such as Zorn, Christian Krohg, Erik Werenskiold or Krøyer. Already as a little girl, those colours kept me spellbound, and when in September in the 60’s and the 70’s we came back to the faded Spanish life, I chose the Nordic fertility as my reference.

This so to say spiritual aspect of the objects rescued when Färgenäs was sold is what conforms Pieces of Memory, an emotional puzzle inherent to my painting; the Scandinavian light, orange with complementing shadows, an atmosphere of daily life with intimate feelings concerning freedom, beauty, time going by, loneliness or waiting.

MOMENTS

CHILDHOOD

Moments of domestic life of my family and neighbours.

I remember the summer nights and how we used to fall asleep watching English films on the fluffy carpet my great-grandmother had woven, our mouths full of chocolates. We wore red and white striped Marimekko nightgowns, Scandinavian design at its most.

Memories from my childhood, as sweet as the cinnamon buns we used to eat down at the beach while digging for blue clay near the waterfront to make figures. We breathed freedom and we used it to carve little boats with our knives in chunks we found in the surroundings. If it rained, not so unusual, we used to draw and do handicraft. It all meant freedom to go out, invent or construct something.

I remember how it felt to put my hand in a calf’s toothless mouth, the fear for poisonous snakes and the currants our neighbour Kajsa made juice from.

Lucía at the desk, 2018, 146 x 114 cm

Anna Archer,The maid in the kitchen, 1883

Schooldays, The Kinks, 2014, 25 x 25 cm

HOUSES The family house as a shelter, the tent or the old duck-house that became a doll-house where we played with Kurre, an old black cat, kind and patient, who Kajsa dressed in baby clothes – she also decorated the windows of our bedroom with colored beads threaded on plenty of long strings. I am talking about the traditional wooden houses on the countryside, white or falu red, the barns and the cottages, or built in the woods as in the fantasy world of Elsa Beskow, author and illustrator of books for children. The clogs stay in the entrance.

My sister Sonia, September 1968

Little painted toy-houses from the beginning of the 20th century House, 2006, 81 x 54 cm

The milk can and other pieces from Färgenäs

LAKE

HORSES

The name Färgen means colour, referring to its unusually blue colour but that changes into several nuances. At dawn it emerges dimmed, with mist, and throughout the day the colour range takes on a life of its own, going from lead blue, ultramarine, sky blue, pink, and yellow to even black and silver, depending on the whims of the sky.

Real horses, wooden, toys or magic like Pippi’s horse.

Or imagined, like my bike when I broke my leg dressed up as a squaw. Horses are very present in the Swedish culture.

My grandmother constantly painted horses, her passion.

We used to go for them in the woods, using carrots and sugar to catch them Amazon, 2017, 40 x 30,5 cm

Canoe, 2018, 35 x 27 cm

A picture of this wooden horse was included in an article about my grandmother Marianne in the January 1946 issue of magazine Svensk Damtidning.

Double rainbow over the lake Färgen

OPEN AIR

SNOW

I admire the love Swedes show nature. They worship it and protect it. I remember where we used to grow potatoes. I still see the raspberries and all the bellflowers, I smell the hay in the barn, the cows and horses, the grass of the lawn where we played badminton and crocket, the bunches of flowers we picked in the garden for the dining table. And the picnic baskets Rosa Hüttner used to bring down to the beach.

Badminton, 1991, 100 x 200 cm

A warm or cold light, with bluish shadows. My mother went to school on a kick-sled with a basket for the books. I never saw Sweden in winter but people has described it and I have imagined it so many times. Winter in the shelter of your home, so well described in the Christmas interiors of Carl Larsson with lighted chandeliers in the windows. To fight the coldness outside, inside the houses are bright and inviting.

Wooden skis from the beginning of the 20th century A boy, 2018, 25 x 25 cm

CHAIRS To me they are like a little piece of the Swedish environment. I don’t quite understand my weakness for these chairs, maybe because they always stood there during so many late evenings.

Illustration, 2003

Chairs from the beginning of the 20th century, rescued from Färgenäs

I invite you to taste an important part of my work with a WELCOME! as my grandmother used to say when we arrived to Sweden

MARIANA LAÍN CLAËSSON Spanish painter, graduated in Arts at the Complutense University, 1990, Faculty of Fine Arts.

From then on she paints and illustrates and has had several individual exhibitions with galleries such as Ynguanzo, Bat, Sen and Vuela Pluma, she has also been present in art fairs

like Arco and Estampa in Madrid, and also in collective exhibitions in Spanish cities, New York, Bologna, Porto, Tokyo or Stockholm.

Furthermore, she is involved in several film, publishing and advertising projects. Her mother is Swedish.

In my painting there is a mixture of genes and environment.

Part of the photos I treasure today, I saw them as a little girl when I searched through my Swedish grandmother’s drawers.

These photos helped me to imagine and understand those old times, so different and modern. Comparing them with the very few photos of my fathers family, (the Spanish Civil War destroyed so much), the terrible differences impressed me.

This cultural clash is obvious in my two grandmothers lives. I was very close to both of them and I believe they had a great influence on my personality and, hence, on my work as a painter. www.marianalain.com

PARALLELISM

I find a certain parallelism between the photos I show here, some Nordic paintings I reproduce and my own paintings, made throughout my professional career.

End 80’s, the painter –and close friend– Carlos

García-Alix taught me how to see when I was only looking. And I think that my painting Dulce digestión from 1995, inspired by a poem by Fernando Royuela, is a résumé of my Swedish/Spanish nationality

First row: Crayfish party, 1994; Lunch, 1994; Dulce digestión (Sweet assimilation of my conscience), 1995 Second row: Dagmar and friends, 1907; Peder Severin Krøyer: Artist’s luncheon at Brøndum’s Hotel, 1883; Hip, hip, hurra, 1888; Crayfish party, my grandmother Marianne and her father Arvid at Färgenäs, August 1939

Milagro Martínez Prieto

Marianne Thulin

My Spanish grandmother, graduated in chemistry by the University of Seville in 1933, never overcame the execution of her father Jesús Martínez Prieto, in Seville in 1936, just because he was a doctor with sympathies for France.

Shortly after her death, I made an exhibition based on her “Letters with no response” that I dedicated to her memory. Her husband, my grandfather Pedro Laín Entralgo came to see it at the Official College of Medicine in Madrid.

All our friends, who she generously received at Färgenäs during many summers, called her Mormor, Swedish for grandmother. She was a skilled amateur jockey and dressage rider, painter and vice consul for Panama in Gothenburg. Sweden was a democracy when she grew up.

Sevilla 1908 - Madrid 1993

Gothenburg 1918 - 2011

Nadie, 1995 “Nobody could deny the goodness in his eyes.”

El recuerdo se teje con doble hilo, 1995 “The memory is weaved with double threads and sometimes you remember things that never were.”

Sentimentalismo, 1995 “Sentimentalism that followed me all through my life.”

Agreement, 1999 Two sisters, 1999 Couple, 2004

Visions of Spain

I also get inspiration from my Spanish descent and I have dealt with all kinds of issues, from the Spanish Civil War to Ibiza and its coast. Of these paintings, my favorite is the scene of departure in exile of my great uncle José Laín. Other issues are Lorca, our traditional Romancero, Juana I, Queen of Spain, wrongly called The Mad, poems by Fernando Royuela and writings by Juan Luis Cano.

Moments in my Sweden

These paintings are just a few of all my paintings from 1990 till today. All of them are like pieces of a big puzzle of memories from summers in the family house in Sweden

Dedicated to my Spanish grandparents, 1995, 60 x 60 cm Homage to José Laín, 2003, 44 x 44 cm Corner, 2007, 55 x 46 cm Coast, 2015 25 x 25 cm

Two sisters, 2018 The walk, 2002 Canoe, 2015

Painters in my family

In terms of genetics, maybe my artistic vein comes from a gene of all these people in my family who loved painting and art. I present them in a family tree, with paintings, drawings and photos I have found among the objects shipped to Spain.

Pyo Claësson: there was a little torn sketchbook with marvellous pencil drawings of family and friends. Pyo was my grandfather Douglas sister and emigrated to Paris to paint. A portrait of her father Carl Magnus Claësson (1871-1927) who was general consul for Panama in Gothenburg and Director of D.T. Ahrenberg, a company that imported and distributed to the Swedes exotic products like tea, oranges, Portuguese sardines, Del Monte canned pineapple, etc. He was very successful, an important person in Gothenburg. His son Douglas inherited the general consul title and when he died his widow Marianne became consul. My mother says that when my grandmother and her children were going in a freighter to visit Panama, there was a very bad storm and the boat went up and down.

My grandmother made my mother and her brother play they were in a roller coaster as the one in Liseberg, amusement park in Gothenburg, and they never became aware of the situation, same trick as in the film Life is Beautiful. My mother also told me that when her father Douglas died, she and her brother were invited to the best coffee shop in town to have pastry. They shouldn’t be present at the funeral, so they wuldn’t suffer. My mother came to think that her father has abandoned the family, which was worse. In those times my Spanish grandmother Milagro’s life was quite different, a young mother in the aftermaths of the Spanish Civil War with great difficulty to find food for her children, and who couldn’t overcome the assassination of her father by the Nationalist faction.

Ralph Claësson (1905-1977) painted landscapes and figurative oils, often popular scenes from Paris, Visby on Gotland and Gothenburg. He is represented in the National Museum and Waldemarsudde in Stockholm, the art museums in Norrköping and Örebro, and in the Institut Tessin in Paris. He has painted

Family tree Family tree

:ŽŚĂŶ ůďĞƌƚ EŽƌĚƐƚƌƂŵ н :ŽŚĂŶŶĂ >ŽǀŝƐĂ ;,ĂŶŶĂͿ EŽƌĚƐƚƌƂŵ

ůůĞŶ

ŝŶĂƌ

frescoes in churches in Rome and Mestre (where a street is called after him).

Melcher Claësson (1943-2013), my uncle, made an oil painting in 1963, which was the pride of my grandmother Marianne. She used to show it to us with a sibylline explanation, Swedish style. She said: “They are the vanquishers, downhearted and sad after winning the battle”. I think this is a good example of the type of education we got. Melcher married Liza Hüttner, who always kept an eye on us. She is the granddaughter of Julius Hüttner (1881-1970), general consul for Costa Rica in Gothenburg, who helped 40.000 Jews to flee from Nazi Germany to Sweden and find relocation.

As a little girl I liked to fetch the mail in the post box and give it to Folke, seated in the sunshine. In 2007 I painted Correo (The mail). The post box was full of earwigs, newspapers and letters. As a teenager I waited eagerly for love letters from Madrid. In them came two or three Winston cigarettes; I used to hide in the garden to smoke and read them.

Folke Thulin was Mormors second husband. He was the Director of Mölnlycke AB, a company producing textiles and cellulose in Gothenburg – and disposable cellulose pampers. When my big sister was born in 1963, Folke and Marianne shipped furniture, glass and other fragile objects to Madrid in a container, all wrapped up in those pampers. Disposable pampers were not available in Spain.

In 2015, when Färgenäs was sold, I made a similar shipping to Madrid with furniture and objects from the beginning of the 20th century. Instead of pampers I used blankets, carpets, sheets and towels to protect them. I love these objects, and some of them, such as old photos, worn oars, wooden horses or the chairs, frequent in the illustrations of Carl Larsson, can now be purchased at Ikea.

DĂƌŐĂƌĞƚŚ ĞĂƚƌŝĐĞ KůĚŝƚĐŚ н 'ĞŽƌŐ KƐŬĂƌ tŝůŬĞŶƐ

ůďĂ

DĂŐŶƵƐ ^ĂŵƵĞů ůĂģƐƐŽŶ н DĂƌŝĂ >ŽǀŝƐĂ ůĂģƐƐŽŶ

<ĂƚƌŝŶĞ ƵŐƵƐƚĂ KůĚŝƚĐŚ ;<ŝƩLJͿ н Ăƌů DĂŐŶƵƐ ůĂģƐƐŽŶ Portrait of Dagmar Hellberg, 1914

She spent several summers in Fontainebleau ƚŽ ƌĞĐĞŝǀĞ ůĞƐƐŽŶƐ ŝŶ ƉĂŝŶƟŶŐ͘

Harriet Nordström

Portrait of Einar Nordström, 1913

Happy Easter from Oslo, 1950

In memory of Douglas, Easter, 1955

&ŽƵƌ ŽĨ <ŝƩLJ͛Ɛ ĐŚŝůĚƌĞŶ͗ Douglas, Orvar, Dolly and Pyo, 1906

ĂŐŵĂƌ ,ĞůůďĞƌŐ н ƌǀŝĚ ,ĞůůďĞƌŐ

Portrait of Carl Johan Carlsson Ekholm, 1953 Roses, 1949

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ŽůůLJ

Orvar

WŽƌƚƌĂŝƚ ŽĨ &ŽůŬĞ dŚƵůŝŶ͕ ϭϵϳϴ Pong, 1943

Marianne Thulin

Outcast, 1945

+

zƩĞƌĂ ;DĂLJͿ

Ralph Claësson

Douglas Claësson

Pyo Claësson

GRAPHIC DESIGN: JAVIER LERÍN / TRANSLATION: SONIA CLAËSSON

WĞĚƌŽ >ĂşŶ ŶƚƌĂůŐŽ н DŝůĂŐƌŽ DĂƌơŶĞnj WƌŝĞƚŽ

WĞĚƌŽ >ĂşŶ DĂƌơŶĞnj н ^ŽŶŝĂ ůĂģƐƐŽŶ

DŝůĂŐƌŽ

Melcher Claësson Publicist, musician and painter

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Winter with snow, 1997 (To the right, Inger Westberg, librarian at the Public Library in Gothenburg)

Lucía

Mariana Laín

ŶĂ ŝŶ ƚŚĞ ǁŝŶĚŽǁ͕ ϭϵϵϴ

ŌĞƌ ĐŽīĞĞ͕ ϭϵϵϳ Mail, 2002

hŶƟƚůĞĚ͕ ϭϵϲϯ ^ƋƵĂǁ͕ ϭϵϱϲ Sonia Claësson, 1963

Ruin in Visby (Gotland) Portrait of Ellen Palace in Rome, ca. 1920 ŽƵƋƵŝŶŝƐƚĞƐ͕ WĂƌşƐ

WĞŶĐŝů ĚƌĂǁŝŶŐƐ͕ ϭϵϬϳͲϭϵϬϴ WŽƌƚƌĂŝƚ ŽĨ <ŝƩLJ͕ ϭϵϰϵ Carl Magnus Claësson Marstrand, 1931