The art collector Erling Neby was the investor and hi-fi founder who became very rich. He used his money to build up a spectacular art collection with so-called concrete art. Concrete art flourished in the 1960s in the United States and Europe. The design language is characterized by clear colors and simple geometric shapes. As a businessman, Erling Neby spent a lot of time in Paris in the 1970s. It was here that he completely fell in love with geometric abstraction. ART COLLECTOR: Erling Neby made good money importing Tivoli radios and has spent much of his fortune on collecting concrete art. Now his collection is exhibited in Bergen. Photo: Petter Neby Neby collected art long before he became rich. In an interview, he admits that even in tight financial times he could let his passion run away with him. While he was in Paris, his wife sat at home freezing because he had bought art instead of paying the oil heating bill. In the exhibition “Heart of the Square” at the Kode museum, we can familiarize ourselves with the result of this “formed madness”, which Neby himself calls his collecting mania. The exhibition already begins in the reception area on the first floor where Lars Gunnar Nordström’s yellow monumental sculpture “Sequence” (1965–1990) in steel enthrones. Concrete art Photo: Wikimedia, Public Domain Concrete art or concretism is about cultivating the plastic means of painting or sculpture. The work should not point beyond itself, but exclusively focus on the interplay between lines, shapes and colors. In contrast to the nature-lyrical abstraction that dominated here at home, they wanted to avoid nature associations in the images. The surface was cultivated and an attempt was made to avoid creating an experience of space in the painting. Concretism neither abstracts nor imitates, but is based on geometric shapes. The term was launched by Theo Van Doesburg in 1930 in his ‘Manifest sur L’art concret’ (see image), but concretism had its greatest flowering in Europe and the USA in the 1960s. Deeply rooted in this project was the dream of a democratization of art. They wanted to create a universal plastic language that everyone could understand, and that could unite people across national borders, like a kind of Esperanto of art. Famous and unknown names The exhibition at the Stenersen Museum in Bergen shows an incredibly consistent and concentrated collection. It offers just under 100 works. Art from both big names such as Josef Albers, Victor Vasarely and Ellsworth Kelly is shown here, and lesser-known but important figures such as Auguste Herbin, Carmen Herrera and Burgoyne Diller. “Island” (2020) by Carmen Herrera. She was 105 years old when she painted this powerful painting. A small, exclusive selection of Norwegian artists has also been included. We find, among others, Gunnar S. Gundersen, Aase Texmon Rygh, Bjørn Ransve and Olav Christopher Jensen. The influence of colors Josef Albers has been given a central place in the exhibition’s first room, with several of his famous works in the series “Homage to the square”. Albers’ project was about exploring the different effects of colors in meeting each other. What, for example, does the green do with the experience of the color yellow? And how does a color change the experience of a shape? Josef Albers: Homage to the Square: Gay (1956). Josef Albers: Homage to the Square: Grisaille and Ground (1961). Josef Albers was not only concerned with colour, but also with light. As a young student, he saw Edvard Munch’s “The Sun” in an exhibition with preparatory work for the hall decorations in Berlin in 1913. This vital explosion of light and color apparently made a strong and indelible impression on him. He himself has described it as his greatest art experience. Although there are no traces of nature references in Albers’s concretism, I think it is possible to see this fascination and heritage in the way he allows the colors to radiate from a center in his pictures. The mathematical and organic A highlight of the exhibition are three small Möbius sculptures by Aase Texmon Rygh. Here the mathematical and the organic meet. In the last thirty years of her life, she explored the Möbius strip, which is a strip that twists around itself and creates a shape without a clear beginning or end, and without an inside or an outside. “I am not the mother of Norwegian modernism, I am the daughter of European sculpture,” said the artist Aase Texmon Rygh. In the 80s, she discovered the Möbius principle, inspired by the mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius. Photo: Dag Fosse In these sculptures, Texmon Rygh explores the dynamic, stable and infinite. I stand for a long time and look at the twisted forms and the rough, uneven surface, which gives the expression a lively touch. Here she skilfully weaves together the mathematical and the organic. The exhibition has a wonderful title “In the heart of the square”. I think this is such a wonderful and paradoxical title. It combines cool rigor with strong passion, which is behind Neby’s collecting activities over fifty dedicated years. After strolling around the extensive exhibition, I think about how wonderful it is to be able to indulge in pure forms and colors in a time like this, when the news picture is dark. It is a rest for the mind and for the eye with clear shapes and colors. I stand in front of a blue work by Gunnar S. Gundersen and think about how, after the war, man fled from the bestial reality into non-figurative art. Gunnar S. Gundersen, “Untitled”, 1961. Photo: Gunnar S. Gundersen / BONO But what is initially a rest also becomes a bit strenuous after a while. Concretism is quite hard and strict, so it feels good to find softer and more sensual works in the exhibition, such as the kinetic images of the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz Diez. In one work, curved shapes emerge from an intricate network of lines, in another image there are rectangles that gradually come into view through the almost textile-like play of lines. Carlos Cruz-Díez, “Physichromie no. 289”, 1965. Carlos Cruz-Díez, “Physichromie no. 168”, 1965. No thematically complementary exhibition Anyone who goes to this exhibition expecting an exhaustive art historical presentation of concretism in the West, will likely to be disappointed. As Kode himself wisely emphasizes: This is not a thematic museum exhibition, but a presentation of a private collection which is based on the collector’s subjective selection. Olle Bærtling works with fierce diagonals and creates these characteristic crystalline shapes. The whole is dissolved a little by the inconsistency in that the contour line that dominates the other shapes is swallowed up where the shape becomes black. Photo: Dag Fosse / Kode Technically speaking, of course the exhibition has its holes and shortcomings. Nevertheless, I must say that I am quite impressed with what the collection actually has to offer. Neby, who has no artistic background and has never used art consultants, really shows that he has an eye and an undoubted flair for quality. And if we don’t get a complete overview, the exhibition clearly gives us a pretty good impression of this very interesting modernist current. news reviews Photo: Dag Fosse / Kode Title: “The heart of the square”. Works from Erling Neby’s collection” Curator: Karin Hellansjø and Frode Sandvik. Museum: Kode (Stenersen), Bergen Time frame: 6.10.23–25.2.24 Estimated time: 45–60 minutes WATCH ON news TV: “Dannet galskap” is what Erling Neby calls his great passion for modern, concrete art. The collection has been shown at several museums in Europe and the USA. Program from 1993.
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“The heart of the square. Works from Erling Neby’s collection” at Kode i Bergen – Reviews and recommendations
