Inge Schiöler, Limitless Landscapes

Inge Schiöler is one of the 20th century's foremost Swedish colourists. When the exhibition at Liljevalchs+, we hope to give a new audience the opportunity to experience a sense of his painting's poetic connection to colour and its great tenderness, empathy and closeness to nature.

At the heart of Inge Schiöler's work is the ability of the colour and the brushstrokes to mediate concentrated moments, atmospheres and immediate sensory experiences. Schiöler draws his subject matter from the nature of Bohuslän. From the salt-corroded rocky landscape in the outer archipelago to the lush fields and forests of the inner countryside. His sensual painting captures the shifting overall impressions and ambiences.

At the age of 18, Schiöler is accepted as a student at Valand in Gothenburg, where he studies under Tor Bjurström. After a period of illness, he is admitted to St Jorgen's Hospital with schizophrenia and his future as a painter is thought to be unravelled. But after nine years in an apathetic state, he suddenly begins to draw and paint on the simplest toilet paper and newsprint. Through paint, he reaches reality again.

After a full 27 years, Schiöler is discharged from St. Jörgen Hospital and settles on the Island of Sydkoster. With his newfound freedom, the strength of the colour and the intensity of the tonality systematically increases. Schiöler is always close to nature. He paints everything outdoors. Directly on the ground. In order to capture the natural experience, the tempo is frenetic. He mixes the paint directly on the canvas. Colouristic intuition and freedom reign. The result is painting with an absolute presence.

In Schiöler's enveloping painting it is as if everything exists in one timeless, intimate moment. We are sucked into the painting. The border between viewer and the painted landscape cease to exist and we understand: the distance between a person and nature's infinite colour atmospheres is never further than to the nearest Schiöler canvas.

Inge Schiöler was born in 1908 in Strömstad and died in 1971 in Stockholm.