About
A collection electrified by joy and love
The laughing king, the light at the end of the road and the angel in the room.
Last year, one of Sweden’s most notable art collectors, Tom Böttiger, decided to sell his collection of Swedish art. Until recently, the collection, which included works by Marie-Louise Ekman, Sally Mann, and Astrid Sylwan, as well as many photographs and sculptures by leading contemporary artists, were on display in Böttiger’s business premises at Cloud Nine on Narvavägen, to please, challenge and inspire the office staff, who frequently were offered art introductions performed by Böttiger himself – a much appreciated workspace benefit. In the fall of 2019, CFHILL presented part I of the collection in a successful exhibition. Now it’s time for part II.
In the early 2000, Tom Böttiger founded his company Cloud Nine, where he was able to unite his belief in the importance of art for creative processes with his passion for collecting. Now as the business is relocating from its spacious offices in Garnisonen, these loose ends are being tied up in order to make way for a new chapter. His shares in the company are for sale, as is the result of his 30 years of art collecting.
This second meeting with Böttiger’s collection, offers some true highlights within Swedish photography and, in addition an extraordinary beautiful and dreamlike work by the mysterious and astonishingly talented Francesca Woodman (1958 – 1981), who in spite of her short life, is counted as a pioneer, anticipating many later movements.
Hans Gedda (b. 1942) is a living legend and an important bridge anchored in the Swedish photographic golden era. Many are the images that have formed common references from times long gone. Memories that feel real in our minds but in reality, are represented by moments caught by Hans Gedda. With the same tenderness and intimacy as he immortalized Nelson Mandela only a few weeks after him being released from his long captivity in apartheid-struck South Africa, the Swedish king appears twenty years later in a unique photo shoot. It wasn’t the first time that Gedda met the king for a session and their friendship obviously appears. To help himself relax to let the photographer get some good opportunities and make a good job, the king began some face gymnastics. Then – click – he pulled the trigger, and that’s that. A rather symbolic picture of the modern Swedish monarchy, with a royalty who wouldn’t avoid a joke on his behalf in the company of friends.
In a memory program on TV, the court singer Birgit Nilsson appeared and told the story on how the great Lennart Nilsson had asked her to get the permission to photograph her godly vocal cords.
In the end of the 1970s, Lennart Nilsson had become world famous for catching a conception and cell division in a uterus on his camera. With this knowledge in mind, La Nilsson had replied: ”Never in my life, I know exactly where your camera has been!” In this self-portrait, Lennart Nilsson is still a young man with sunshine in his face and impressing biceps.
Few are those artists who have passed the needle’s eye to the MoMA collection in New York. One who is represented is the photographer Christer Strömholm (1918 – 2002) and Tanger belongs to one of his most lyrical images. The year is 1952, and in an alley somewhere in the city a child is walking towards the unknown. But at the end of the street, there is a magic and promising light. A poetic image of hope, youth and expectations!
Francesca Woodman didn’t live long enough to receive any recognition to talk about during her lifetime, she only became 23. Still, she initiated several conceptually based photo projects that in many ways presaged several movements in art that came to pervade, transform and widen a number of new practices, as for instance Postmodernism, video art and artist books. As a thirteen-year-old, Woodman took her first self-portrait and later continued with experiments such as double exposure and other forms of manipulations in order to create a dreamlike, psychologically charged effect. All of this is included in the image represented in the exhibition: Francesca sits in a dress with abstract patterns corresponding disharmoniously with the black and white tiles in the floor and hanging from the doorpost is the same girl, this time naked with her contours blurred like an angel or a crucifix. The photo is signed by her parents who were both artists.
Getting the opportunity to take part in Tom Böttiger’s selection of art works is a bliss. The energy, the quality shines through it all.
“I love my art, and the works are like friends to me. These have been some incredible years, and I’m delighted to have had this opportunity to spend time with the art every day and share this experience with my co-workers. Now, I’m looking to the future, and I’ll continue collecting art, although perhaps in a slightly different way”, says Tom Böttiger.
“Tom has an astonishing intuition when it comes to art, and he’s always had a knack for picking up the best works before anybody else”
— Anna-Karin Pusic, one of the founders of CFHILL
