Axel Olson

designer

Axel Olson worked with recurring surrealist motifs drawn from coastal Halland: ploughs, anchors, boats, fishing gear, shells. His paintings often placed these everyday objects in dreamlike arrangements, using a vocabulary that became more abstract after contact with non-figurative French painting in the late 1940s yet returned to recognisable imagery in later decades. Early work showed cubist influence absorbed during study with Alexander Archipenko in Berlin, but by the time he co-founded the Halmstadgruppen in 1929 he had oriented decisively toward surrealism. The Second World War marked a darker phase in palette and subject. Hamn (1939) and Svart kväll (1940) reflect the period's tension. Subsequent travel to Provence brought lighter colour, and severe eye disease in the 1970s produced Ögat (1974), a painting that addresses the threat of blindness. Late work continued to mine the forms of the Swedish west coast. Olson is represented at Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and Hallands konstmuseum.