Björn Wessman

Björn Wessman is today one of Sweden's most prominent landscape painters. With a poetic abstracting gaze, a sonorous colorite is created, of own imagery we can refer to. The limits of natural abstraction stimulate reflection over our own relationship with nature. Wessman's painting is far beyond the established codes for representation. It constitutes a kind of recilience in the form of a reliance on nature's own ability to heal. Following Björn Wessman’s work is like being on a metaphysical journey through different terrains, environments, light and color conditions. The surroundings emerge in a rich pattern of light and dark, color and form, following his travelling from north to south. At times, mountain ranges, valleys and rivers are depicted in large formats and through vast horizons, while at other times the imagery is filled with cypresses, vines and dense bushes that are woven together with the same dense intensity. Björn Wessman describes the power and the essence of nature from travelling and hiking in different parts of the world. He talks about the various types of landscapes, the difference between the ‘materiality’ in the north, to the light in the south of France where the sun is at its zenith and creates a landscape without shadows. From an art-historical point of view, one is reminded of Bonnard’s impressionism, David Hockney’s colourful landscapes or the young Peter Doig’s South Sea paintings. 

Born in 1949, Björn Wessman lives and works in Sweden and France, educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. He has a long series of exhibitions at galleries, art centres and museums in Sweden, France and internationally.In Stockholm, he showed a retrospective at Waldermarsudde, 2019.

"Nature, by definition, has no language. The murmur of the firs and the rustle of the aspen leaves whisper to us in the wind. Among the treetops, a story is leafed through and recounted. Roots and soil communicate through mycelium and networking organisms. With today’s technology, we can register the constant growth of nature as sounds and signals. By considering, preserving and refining our relationship with nature, art can be an eye-opener.”

Björn Wessman