Baertling is hardly known outside Scandinavia. He had the occasional exhibition in Switzerland at the von Barth gallery ( catalogue available at www.ftn-books.com) but that’s it, but look at auction results from the last decade of Baertling paintings and you will notice that prices are on the rise and not only because there is a raised interest in his works from Sweden. After the large Retrospective exhibition in the Moderna Museet, people began to notice his works and appreciate them.
They recognized in them the link between Modern constructivist art and architecture. This is what i noticed myself when i first encountered a book on Baertling 2 years ago. This is not an artist for the masses, but see one of his paintings or sculptures and you certainly will be impressed. This is constructivist art in “optima forma” with a highly personal approach. Impressive and his sculptures of thin materials seems to vanish in the air. Not being there, but at the same time present.
Olle Bærtling
It radiates a compressed concentration of highly-charged power that is transformed with suggestive radiant force into infinite space in strong dynamics and unknown dimensions. Art at its most sublime is a hymn of praise to creation, an invisible but ever-present force.
A sense of the infinite, a flight to an invisible destination.
A positive change of man’s inner life, a realization of his world of ideas. An intellectualization, a visualization of the positive source of creative power, a visualization of its ethereal beauty.”
Olle Bærtling
