Barbro Östlihn was educated at the Royal Academy for the Fine Arts in Stockholm and moved to New York in 1961 where she socialised and exhibited with the American avant-garde. Initially, she predominantly painted the flat façades of the urban landscape and abstracted architecture, frequently based on photographs,
in strict compositions. She found her motifs in condemned building blocks in Stockholm and Manhattan. In 1976, Barbro Östlihn settled in Paris and exclusively painted abstract works in her characteristic pattern technique. It is from this period that the painting in the collections of Gothenburg Museum of Art originates.
Although Barbro Östlihn’s work received much attention already at the beginning of the 1960s among the inner circles of Manhattan’s art scene, her position in Swedish art history has not been undisputed.
Last year, Annika Öhrner published her doctoral thesis, Barbro Östlihn and New York: The Space and Possibilites of Art, devoted to her art.
Per Dahlström 2011
