Ulf Greder belongs to the tradition of Swedish figurative painters.
French art and Paris had for generations inspired Scandinavian painters In the early 1900s some Swedes left Paris disillusioned. New art was for the new emerging industrial metropolises. Instead, these artists invented their own language to describe their fast disappearing society.
If their expression was naïve it didn't mean they were ignorant.
It began with names like Hilding Linnqvist and Eric Hallström and later included Bror Hjort and Olle Olsson. Ulf Greder grew up with this heritage but has also learnt from the French 18th century painters the Nabis and the American realists. He is a keen museum visitor.
The new exhibition at Francis Kyle Gallery in July 2000 is totally dedicated to chantourné paintings. This is a technique of distilling the essence of the picture by carving it out.
Ulf Greder has lived half his life outside Sweden. He now lives in Britain but travels frequently to France and especially Languedoc. There, the old ways are rapidly giving way to new but there is still inspiration in the small towns in France. He paints from memory. He says 'reality destroys dreams'. He paints the 'good life'. Why paint things disagreeable?
France is his country of Cockaigne where the milk and honey flow and the sun always shines. Renoir said something about being surrounded by so much daily ugliness that paintings had to be beautiful.
Ulf Greder paints happiness in brilliant colours. Colours make you happy. Ulf Greder is self-taught as a painter. He was only twenty when he held his first one-man exhibition in Stockholm. He has regularly exhibited in Stockholm. Gothenburg and other Swedish cities.
He has also successfully exhibited in the USA,the Netherlands and India.
Ulf Greder will show his latest chantourné paintings at Francis Kyle Gallery in London in July 2000. He has been represented by Francis Kyle Gallery in London since mid 1980 and has had one-man exhibitions there in 1991, 1993, 1994 and 1997. ...
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