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Born 1949 in Hässleholm, Skåne.
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Raised in Malmö and Örebro.
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University studies in Örebro; Bachelor in Literature, 1976.
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Academy of Fine Art in Stockholm: Master in Fine Art, 1981.
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Landscape painter has been the epithet
that has followed the artist Björn Wessman from the very beginning of his artistic career. The landscape and nature have always been frequently recurring motive in a rich variety of forms. They are desolated and uninhabited landscapes. Björn's interest in nature started early in childhood playing in wild overgrown gardens and in the woods parallel as a systematic collection of herbs for a herbarium was in progress. Sometimes it is with focus on the microscopic another time the macroscopic perspective. As an observer it can be difficult to know how to focus. Displacement of perspective and water reflections confuses. Where should you focus. The water surface can be seen from below and above. The satellite image becomes a detail out of a mountain landscape.
Björn Wessman had his first exhibition 1981 at Galleri Engström, Stockholm. The year after, at the same gallery, he showed pastell poetic Monet-inspired paintings of water reflections. Henceforth environments or installation was staged to be continued by shaped canvases.
VATTENLEK. 1982 Acryl on canvas 200X350cm
1983 Björn made an excursion to Japan and it became a turning point. By now he started to paint a darker, more powerful furious heavy painting with Nordic mythology as a background. It was the immemorial landscape and cliffs painted with anxious energy. A series of diptychs mark a change to a more open landscape. Successively the violent Nordic passes to a calmer horizontal expression. He painted marshlands with powerful colours; as "suggestions for new horizons". Places and names with poetic power gave titles to many paintings "Stålbådan", "Nidingen" and "Digervålen". Handarbetes Vänner in Stockholm have made several tapestries from this suite.
WATERFRONT. 1983 Acryl on canvas 220X290cm
In the beginning of the 90`s Björn showed series of monumental paintings. Here came influences from the barren landscape in Languedoc, France. To continue in the research for the origin of landscape Björn started to "distillate" from his own paintings. "Distillate" became the working name on a big suite of paintings.
DESTILLAT IV . 1993 Oil on canvas 190X190cm
The separate exhibition 1994 on Konstnärshuset, Stockholm contained figurative elements in the paintings, but the landscape dominated to again become the central theme in his work.
In the middle of the 90´s Wessman began a new relationship with Ateljé Ole Larsen. An experimental work with coloured etchings became a source of inspiration for his painting. Photography was an additional image source.
2000
The new millennium started with an eight month residency at Cité International des Arts in Paris. The circumstances forced Wessman to develop new working methods to paint landscape with acrylics on paper. Björn would wash the paint off the paper, paint some more and then wash the work again.
LYSIMACHIA. 2001 Oil on canvas 170X225cm
While the galleries and museums of Paris made a great impression, the main inspirations were the parks and gardens. During the Autumn of 2000 a completely new organic painting grew in the studio in Stockholm. The circle was fulfilled, the garden was once again the theme for his work. But something has changed, something that demands a deciphering. In the new paintings a fusion with fictions and existing gardens has taken place. These are manipulated in a romantic painting with an art historical flow.
2001 became an important year in Björns artistry. It began with an exhibition at Konst Akademien in Stockholm. The walls where covered by new paintings made during the last three years . The big parc-paintings where dominating with "Epikuros garden" as a crescendo.
EPIKUROS GARDEN. 2001 Oil on canvas 225x340cm
Even a few paintings of nordic landscapes where showned. One of theese paintings" Bunnerstöten" was personilly purchased by king Carl den XVI Gustav, and is today placed in "Jubileums rummet" at the Royal castle in Stockholm
Another part of the exhibiton at Konst Akademien could be compared with a "report" of 20 years research in visualising nature. A concentrate of the japanese garden was shown by "domain Kyoto", the french cultivated garden in "domain Giverny" and the wild nordic landscape in "domain Sylarna" . Similair to the destillate Björn made during the -90´is this hanging included 3x3 paintings.. In another room was the "akryells" exhibited , the ones he made in Paris 2000.
MANFALL. 2000 Acryl on paper 149X203cm
An intensiv year of exhibitios in Sweden followed and new internationell contacts begun. Björns first separatexhibition in Paris was 2001 at Gallerie Danoise in the Marais. The year after followed by separatexhibitions in Roskilde and Viborg in Denmark.
After some years of hard work Björn got a schoolarship 2002 that gave the possibility to a journey in Australia he had longed for. For several months he travelled around in a diffrent landskape and a foreign nature and took phothos / made sketches. The work that followed after the trip could superficially be observed as pastoral wild landscapes, but if you have a closer look it could as well be the "uninhabited nature," that "terra nullius" James Cook and others thought they had discovered, completly ignoring the original inhabitants
A large projekt of panorama paintings started. these paintings became the base for following years project " borrowed landscapes".
The cultivated landscapes, were still in process as Park-paintings that Björn showned in galleries i Sweden, France and Denmark. The main inspiration for these paintings was still the 100´s of botanical and private gardens Björn has been studying since long.
MELBOURNEII. oil on canvas 190x190cm
Curiculum Vitae
Education:
Master in Litterature, University of Örebro, Sweden, 1973
Master in Fine Art, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm,
Sweden 1981.
Selected Solo Exhibitions:
ÖDÄNGLA. 1990 Oil on canvas 162X138cm. Götegorgs Konstmuseum
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