ULLA AND GUSTAV KRAITZ

SELF PORTRAIT ULLA KRAITZ / Oil on canvas /100 × 65 cm /1960

PUPAE / Stoneware / each 93 × 43 cm /1989

LIFE / Stoneware / Frieze, Ravinen / Båstad / Sweden / 2022

LIFE / Stoneware / Installation / Capital Museum / Beijing, China / 2009

SECRET STONE / Stoneware / 43 cm / 1989

BEAN / Stoneware / 26 cm / 1988

INDIVIDUAL IN THE PATTERN / Stoneware / 35 × 35 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 12 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 62 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 60 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 15 cm /1973

INSTALLATION / Stoneware / 90 x 90 cm

INSTALLATION / Stoneware, diabas / 150 x 150 cm

PUPA / Stoneware / 90 cm / 1978

BEAN / Stoneware / 110 cm

BIRGIT NILSSON / Birgit Nilsson statuette for the awarding of the Birgit Nilsson prize / Bronze / 30 cm

BIRGIT NILSSON / Ulla Kraitz sculpts a version of Birgit Nilsson that is two meters

BIRGIT NILSSON / Gustav Kraitz glazes

BIRGIT NILSSON / Birgit Nilsson statuette for the awarding of the Birgit Nilsson prize / Bronze / 30 cm

THE ARTISTS MOUNTING ”STRING OF FIRE” / Stoneware / Installation / 80 meters / COPIA Napa, California, USA / 2004

TORSO / Stoneware / 90 cm /1984

HAVANDE / Stoneware / 98 cm / Collection Moderna Museet / Stockholm, Sweden / 2006

INSIDE THE KILN

TORSO / Stoneware / 90 cm / 1984

INSTALLATION / Stoneware , granite / Installation / Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden /1993

TORSOS / Stoneware / 55 cm / 1995

TORSOS / Stoneware / Installation / Regionmuseet Skåne, Kristianstad, Sweden

CECILIA / Stoneware / 40 cm / 1973

TWINS / Stoneware / 20 × 25 cm / 1973

ON ULLA KRAITZ’S ART

by Carl-Johan Olsson

It is often said that what distinguishes self-portraits from portraits in general is the model’s concentrated gaze, which stems from the artist sometimes looking at herself in a mirror, sometimes painting her likeness on the canvas in front of her. In a way, the ability to paint one’s own portrait is an opportunity to reinvent oneself, or at least to be able to shape the image of oneself. At the great annual Salon in Paris around the middle of the 19th century, Gustave Courbet regularly showed self-portraits in which he dressed himself up in various roles, from wounded soldier to musician to peasant. The portraits attracted a great deal of attention, and, collectively, they are today seen as a successful campaign to promote the artist’s own work. In these self-portraits, the gaze plays a key role. In its various guises, it meets, or seeks, the viewer’s eyes in a way that is almost confrontational. Before long, we also realize that Courbet is looking at us without being particularly interested in himself, but that he is all the more concerned with how we should experience him. As if, while working, he has not examined his reflection, but rather admired it and pondered how to achieve the intended impression.

It was after looking at two self-portraits by Ulla Kraitz that I came to think about the meaning of Courbet’s gaze. The first portrait was from 1950, when Ulla was 14 years old, and the second was from 1955, when she was a student at Konstfack in Stockholm, a time in an artist’s life that for most people is probably characterized by thoughts about choices, direction and the meaning of creating. It is a situation that can force one to adapt strategies in order to be seen in a world of fierce competition. Strategies that at worst lead to compromises regarding one’s own convictions and to compromises regarding what is perhaps best described as the sincerity of one’s own creation.

I saw Ulla’s two self-portraits only after I got to know her later works. Both portraits are dominated by a pair of dark eyes with great depth. The gaze is fixed. But is it looking at us? It doesn’t really feel like it. Nor does it seem to be studying its own face as if from the outside. What is special about these portraits is that the artist is actually scrutinizing herself. Not reading her own reflection, but analysing her own person. As an artist, as a woman and as a human being.

Encountering these portraits after getting to know Ulla Kraitz’s later sculptures, paintings and collages has been an experience of confirming insight. The portraits allow us to understand what it means to dare to start from oneself without distancing oneself from one’s own person, but at the same time without compromising one’s integrity.

This precarious balance characterizes all of Ulla Kraitz’s creative work, in which life is a central theme; the emergence of life, the fragility of life and the power of life. In Ulla Kraitz’s visual world, life and reflections on life are a constant presence, albeit without ever becoming sentimental or too private.

To understand the meaning of this, I think one must consider the difference between the lives people live and the experience they gather. But how does human experience relate to the life that a person has lived? Experience must come from what has been lived, but is it not a reflection of life? The view of experience is likely to be deeply individual. For some people, experience may be largely equivalent to memory. In their efforts to move forward in life, such people concentrate on positive experiences. These are cherished in their concrete form as pleasant memories to be regularly redrawn, often as a means of selfdelusion.

For others, experience is more like consciousness. The details of the memory have been cleared away, but the feelings that followed certain experiences will always linger. One may not want to, or be able to, approach the lived through memory. I am thinking of the experiences that you cannot remember but that you can’t forget either. That you carry with you as inarticulate pain. Or happiness. That make the experience act as a feeler or a radar. I think that in art that endures, this is how abstraction occurs. You create through consciousness instead of from memory. And this is how I experience Ulla Kraitz’s art. Her visual language is constantly legible, but, through this kind of abstraction, viewers decide just how close they want to allow the experience of the work to come.

Ulla Kraitz creates both sculpture and two-dimensional art. On the surface, the expressions can be perceived as quite different, but the starting point is often the same. In both sculpture and collage, conception and pregnancy, or, rather, the hope of having a child and the uncertainty and unpredictability that undermine this, are recurring themes. They reflect the impulse to understand one’s body even though one knows one cannot control it. In the collages, inner processes are depicted with sharp wedges that break into surfaces and textures that visualize notions of tissues and cells. The beautiful handmade papers used by Ulla Kraitz gives the collages a remarkable sensuality that almost makes them feel like living surfaces painted in glazes.

Pregnancy is also repeatedly portrayed as a natural continuation. In Ulla Kraitz’s visual world, the bean, the egg and the embryo are almost archetypes, appearing in an infinite number of forms to reflect how pregnancy and eventually the emergence of a new life propagate themselves in the parents’ world view like ripples on water. In collages and watercolours, they can float alone in deep blue space or rest safely in a womblike form or take root in the earth. As ceramic sculptures of various sizes, they are sometimes solitary and sometimes part of larger contexts. However, the inherent power of the individual body is always experienced as a palpable presence. This is the case in the installation where they form an overwhelming circle that is exquisitely com- posed but that at the same time evoke beach finds thrown up on land after a storm. Individual sizes, shapes and glazes form a whole and vibrant entity.

Finally, the female torso is a central motif to which Ulla Kraitz returns and which in a way encompasses the previous motifs. Archaically posed but depicted as flesh and blood, it is as eternal as it is anchored in the moment when the viewer encounters it. Sacrosanct yet close – iconic like the crucifix with the nailed Jesus, but at the same time its more realistic counter-image, dedicated to man in general and woman in particular.

SELF PORTRAIT ULLA KRAITZ / Oil on canvas /100 × 65 cm /1960

PUPAE / Stoneware / each 93 × 43 cm /1989

LIFE / Stoneware / Frieze, Ravinen / Båstad / Sweden / 2022

LIFE / Stoneware / Installation / Capital Museum / Beijing, China / 2009

SECRET STONE / Stoneware / 43 cm / 1989

BEAN / Stoneware / 26 cm / 1988

INDIVIDUAL IN THE PATTERN / Stoneware / 35 × 35 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 12 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 62 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 60 cm /1973

ANNA / Stoneware / 15 cm /1973

INSTALLATION / Stoneware / 90 x 90 cm

INSTALLATION / Stoneware, diabas / 150 x 150 cm

PUPA / Stoneware / 90 cm / 1978

BEAN / Stoneware / 110 cm

BIRGIT NILSSON / Birgit Nilsson statuette for the awarding of the Birgit Nilsson prize / Bronze / 30 cm

BIRGIT NILSSON / Ulla Kraitz sculpts a version of Birgit Nilsson that is two meters

BIRGIT NILSSON / Gustav Kraitz glazes

BIRGIT NILSSON / Birgit Nilsson statuette for the awarding of the Birgit Nilsson prize / Bronze / 30 cm

THE ARTISTS MOUNTING ”STRING OF FIRE” / Stoneware / Installation / 80 meters / COPIA Napa, California, USA / 2004

TORSO / Stoneware / 90 cm /1984

HAVANDE / Stoneware / 98 cm / Collection Moderna Museet / Stockholm, Sweden / 2006

INSIDE THE KILN

TORSO / Stoneware / 90 cm / 1984

INSTALLATION / Stoneware , granite / Installation / Malmö Art Museum, Malmö, Sweden /1993

TORSOS / Stoneware / 55 cm / 1995

TORSOS / Stoneware / Installation / Regionmuseet Skåne, Kristianstad, Sweden

CECILIA / Stoneware / 40 cm / 1973

TWINS / Stoneware / 20 × 25 cm / 1973

ON ULLA KRAITZ’S ART

by Carl-Johan Olsson

It is often said that what distinguishes self-portraits from portraits in general is the model’s concentrated gaze, which stems from the artist sometimes looking at herself in a mirror, sometimes painting her likeness on the canvas in front of her. In a way, the ability to paint one’s own portrait is an opportunity to reinvent oneself, or at least to be able to shape the image of oneself. At the great annual Salon in Paris around the middle of the 19th century, Gustave Courbet regularly showed self-portraits in which he dressed himself up in various roles, from wounded soldier to musician to peasant. The portraits attracted a great deal of attention, and, collectively, they are today seen as a successful campaign to promote the artist’s own work. In these self-portraits, the gaze plays a key role. In its various guises, it meets, or seeks, the viewer’s eyes in a way that is almost confrontational. Before long, we also realize that Courbet is looking at us without being particularly interested in himself, but that he is all the more concerned with how we should experience him. As if, while working, he has not examined his reflection, but rather admired it and pondered how to achieve the intended impression.

It was after looking at two self-portraits by Ulla Kraitz that I came to think about the meaning of Courbet’s gaze. The first portrait was from 1950, when Ulla was 14 years old, and the second was from 1955, when she was a student at Konstfack in Stockholm, a time in an artist’s life that for most people is probably characterized by thoughts about choices, direction and the meaning of creating. It is a situation that can force one to adapt strategies in order to be seen in a world of fierce competition. Strategies that at worst lead to compromises regarding one’s own convictions and to compromises regarding what is perhaps best described as the sincerity of one’s own creation.

I saw Ulla’s two self-portraits only after I got to know her later works. Both portraits are dominated by a pair of dark eyes with great depth. The gaze is fixed. But is it look- ing at us? It doesn’t really feel like it. Nor does it seem to be studying its own face as if from the outside. What is special about these portraits is that the artist is actually scrutinizing herself. Not reading her own reflection, but analysing her own person. As an artist, as a woman and as a human being.

Encountering these portraits after getting to know Ulla Kraitz’s later sculptures, paintings and collages has been an experience of confirming insight. The portraits allow us to understand what it means to dare to start from oneself without distancing oneself from one’s own person, but at the same time without compromising one’s integrity.

This precarious balance characterizes all of Ulla Kraitz’s creative work, in which life is a central theme; the emergence of life, the fragility of life and the power of life. In Ulla Kraitz’s visual world, life and reflections on life are a constant presence, albeit without ever becoming sentimental or too private.

To understand the meaning of this, I think one must consider the difference between the lives people live and the experience they gather. But how does human experience relate to the life that a person has lived? Experience must come from what has been lived, but is it not a reflection of life? The view of experience is likely to be deeply individual. For some people, experience may be largely equivalent to memory. In their efforts to move forward in life, such people concentrate on positive experiences. These are cherished in their concrete form as pleasant memories to be regularly redrawn, often as a means of selfdelusion.

For others, experience is more like consciousness. The details of the memory have been cleared away, but the feelings that followed certain experiences will always linger. One may not want to, or be able to, approach the lived through memory. I am thinking of the experiences that you cannot remember but that you can’t forget either. That you carry with you as inarticulate pain. Or happiness. That make the experience act as a feeler or a radar. I think that in art that endures, this is how abstraction occurs. You create through consciousness instead of from memory. And this is how I experience Ulla Kraitz’s art. Her visual language is constantly legible, but, through this kind of abstraction, viewers decide just how close they want to allow the experience of the work to come.

Ulla Kraitz creates both sculpture and two-dimensional art. On the surface, the ex- pressions can be perceived as quite different, but the starting point is often the same. In both sculpture and collage, conception and pregnancy, or, rather, the hope of having a child and the uncertainty and unpredictability that undermine this, are recurring themes. They reflect the impulse to understand one’s body even though one knows one cannot control it. In the collages, inner processes are depicted with sharp wedges that break into surfaces and textures that visualize notions of tissues and cells. The beautiful handmade papers used by Ulla Kraitz gives the collages a remarkable sensuality that almost makes them feel like living surfaces painted in glazes.

Pregnancy is also repeatedly portrayed as a natural continuation. In Ulla Kraitz’s visual world, the bean, the egg and the embryo are almost archetypes, appearing in an infinite number of forms to reflect how pregnancy and eventually the emergence of a new life propagate themselves in the parents’ world view like ripples on water. In collages and watercolours, they can float alone in deep blue space or rest safely in a womblike form or take root in the earth. As ceramic sculptures of various sizes, they are sometimes solitary and sometimes part of larger contexts. However, the inherent power of the individual body is always experienced as a palpable presence. This is the case in the installation where they form an overwhelming circle that is exquisitely composed but that at the same time evoke beach finds thrown up on land after a storm. Individual sizes, shapes and glazes form a whole and vibrant entity.

Finally, the female torso is a central motif to which Ulla Kraitz returns and which in a way encompasses the previous motifs. Archaically posed but depicted as flesh and blood, it is as eternal as it is anchored in the moment when the viewer encounters it. Sacrosanct yet close – iconic like the crucifix with the nailed Jesus, but at the same time its more realistic counter-image, dedicated to man in general and woman in particular.