Gustav Fjaestad

 Gustav Fjaestad Stockholm was born 22 Dec 1868.  (dead Arvika, 7 July 1948). Swedish painter, printmaker and designer. He trained at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1891–2. Subsequently he studied with Bruno Liljefors and Carl Larsson, assisting them with such decorative schemes as Larsson’s fresco at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (1896). In 1897 he moved to the Arvika district of Värmland, where he worked together with his wife, Maja (1873–1961), as painter, craftsman and cabinetmaker, and gathered around him a circle of artists who became known as the Racken group. He first achieved public recognition at the Stockholm Artists Union exhibition in 1898 with some of his snow landscapes, which were an immediate popular success and were often reproduced. He had his first one-man exhibition in Stockholm in 1908, and his paintings were well received when exhibited in Berlin in 1914 and in London in 1927.

Gustav Fjaestad made the frost- covered fields and snow-laden branches of the Swedish winter his hallmark. He adopted country life, migrating to the densely forested province of Varmland in western Sweden. He was less interested in depicting country activities or wildlife than in exploiting the abstract pictorial qualities of the landscape. In his hands, the countryside in its winter guise became a vehicle for decorative surface patterns of dots and swirling Art Nouveau inspired arabesques. Yet they are never blandly pretty, and occasionally contain a hint of menace. The cold, unknown depths of the mysterious stretch of water contained within snowy river banks in Winter Evening by a River carry a sense of foreboding.

Art Fund Magazine 
(author not credited)

I came across Gustav Fjaestad in the Malmö Museer. In one room, on the walls had work by him 'Sunlight on shallow water' (1906)
The painting probably woke up my early childhood memories ... I remember something from my subconscious...


To me there was no menace about the pictures - that they felt entirely calm. This is one of the most interesting things about art, or the arts in general: the much room left for individual interpretation, the diversity of response and the unknown intentions of the artist. To me the pictures spoke of perfect, untouched beauty. They reminded me of a visit to Rydal Hall in the English Lake District, at twilight, when there was a light breeze rippling the lake like silk and the silver birches hung their heads ponderously over the water. The whole atmosphere was scented with the calm of evening, and I sat down on the quay to watch on the water and felt completely at peace.

 I was totally stunned by his work, which seemed so beautiful and real and yet somehow magical. I stood and stared for a long time, and went back to those paintings after I'd seen everything else.  When I got home, I googled Mr Fjaestad, to find more information about his art.

agneta wrote: "Vinter Månsken (Winter Moonlight)"
    was painted in 1895 while on a skiing trip in the province of Värmland, where Fjaestad eventually built a home on lake Racken. There he could observe the icy, just melted, streams' flow. He began to paint the running water theme in 1901 as tapestry cartoons and oil paintings. There are several examples of this motif as he continued to paint it throughout his life. You can see the tapestries at the National Art museum in Copenhagen and in Gothenburg at the Rhoska Museum
    and the painting can be seen at the Thiel Gallery in Stockholm. The most sensational is perhaps the tapestry cartoon which is in Arvika at the Rackstad Museua. These are popular works for exhibitions so telephone first before traveling to see them. You may contact me for further information. fjaestadsart@swipnet.se
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http://www.rackstadmuseet.se/aktuellt/gustav-fjaestad-och-det-sublima-arvika-nyheter 
translated by google:
Gustav Fjæstad and the sublime - Arvika News

Text from © Arvika News 2008-07-21
We know Gustaf Fjæstad as snömålaren. German art criticism called him "snökonungen from the Nordic countries", well as much because of his interest in winter sports as for his paintings with winter motifs. We recall easily in the memory a number of snowy landscapes, snow young pines, snow-covered trails. Inserted in the shimmering white one gleaming ice, frost, ice crystals. It's nice - and grim.

Human beings make themselves felt in the images only by its absence. She was here, but is not here anymore. Ski track has had time to get over the snow, may soon be annihilated. A lone skater is implied only, a quick shadow over an area of steep cuts.
One of these winter images, Professor Hans-Olof Boström paid special attention, "Life's Mystery" from 1919. Snow-covered footsteps loses itself towards the horizon and the setting sun. The perspective is narrow, low, a single snow-laden branch obscuring all vision. Bostrom read in the image an affidavit of theosophical variety.
Theosophy was in vogue, Gustaf Fjæstad were avid supporters of the ideas, lectured on the subject and was the leader of the group that regularly met for talks in Arvika. Bostrom believes there is reason to ask whether not Gustaf Fjæstad even in his art is a theosophical preacher. That he with point Illis Semitic techniques and colors from the spectrum, placed close together, produces a "white light of truth." That he was on the canvas recreate the vibrations Theosophists saw as the essence of creation.