Le vin herbé II
Ola Billgren was a Swedish contemporary artist and art theorist who was taught by his parents, the artists Hans and Grete Billgren. Billgren worked with various media such as graphics, watercolor, collage, photography, film and scenography. He was also an author and cultural writer. Billgren was very multifaceted in his creation and in his artistry cultivated the relationship between art and reality.
During the 1960s he moved from abstract expressionism to photo-realism. Eventually his paintings became something between the abstract and the photorealistic, resulting in romantic landscapes where he explored the relationship between light and color. The forms were dissolved, and the colors were reduced to a monochrome, single-colored surface, which was richly processed and varied. In the 1990s he presented a series of red-surfaced paintings, which at first sight give the impression of something abstract, after which the underlying pictures slowly emerge.
Ola Billgren was born in Copenhagen in 1940 and passed away in Malmö, Sweden in 2001. His art can be seen in various public collections including Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Billgren has had a great influence on the art world in recent decades.
Le vin herbé II, 1993, by Ola Billgren is installed in the president's office at SSE.