The paintings reflect the life of the artist
From harmony to disease
 During
the first half of the nineteen twenties, since the family had moved
to Paris, Hjertén's art is relatively harmonious. As time
goes by you get an inkling of a tension that successively rises
and reaches its height immediately before the disease forces Sigrid
Hjertén to cease as an artist. In the late twenties, when
Sigrid is very isolated in France while Isaac spends much of his
time in Stockholm, colder and darker colours begin to show. Recurring
diagonal strokes contibute to give the paintings a tense impression.
During the thirties Sigrid Hjertén makes innovative pictures
which are characterized by menacing tones and feelings of abandonment
and uppiling storm clouds. In 1932 she gets ill and goes back to
Sweden, where she is taken to a hospital.
The picture-book of her life
The artist recovers temporarily and in the years 1933-34 she devotes
herself to an intensive painting, when she makes a picture a day,
"the picture-book of her life", according to an interview in a monthly
magazine. Some paintings radiate horror while others give a warm
and harmonious impression. In the two following years Hjertén's
artistry culminates in a crescendo, where she like one possessed
makes pictures that expresse strongly loaded feelings. One gets
the impression that she tries to master a threatening inner chaos
with her creative work.
Makes her name as an artist in 1936
Sigrid Hjertén has her first large one-man exhibition in
1936, when she makes her name as an artist. After two more years
she is taken to the Swedish mental hospital of Beckomberga with
the diagnosis of schizophrenia, and she gives up painting for ever.
Twelve years later Sigrid Hjertén dies after an akwardly
performed lobotomy.
|
|
