The artist B.J.O. Nordfeldt lived throughout the world during his prolific career, and his constant exposure to new residences, techniques, and fellow artists inspired him to explore a variety of styles, genres, and media of twentieth-century modernist art. These influences of place and diverse artistic traditions, along with his personal desire to experiment with ideas and seek fresh sources of stimulation, dominated his work and life.
Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (1878-1955) emigrated from Sweden to Chicago and began his training at the Art Institute of Chicago. He later moved to Paris and New York; traveled in Europe and Morocco; held teaching positions in Wichita, Minneapolis, and Logan, Utah; and participated in prominent American art colonies in Provincetown, Santa Fe and Taos, and Lambertville, New Jersey. This array of locales provided subjects for his landscape oil paintings, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs, which range from Chicago cityscapes to scenes of the desert in New Mexico to vies of the Mississippi River. His oil portraits also reflect the diversity of people he encountered - contemplative children, Hispanic laborers in the Southwest, family members. The Fauves and Henri Matisse are evident in his palette; elements of cubism appear in his compositions; his domestic still life arrangements recall the works of Paul Cezanne; and his wood carvings and woodcuts share similarities with the art of Paul Gauguin and with Japanese print traditions. He learned from contemporary American artists, such as Arthur Dove and John Marin, as well as from Mexican and Native American cultures. Nordfeldt continuously explored new places, subjects, and art forms with prodigious creative energy.
B.J.O. Nordfeldt: American Internationalist is a comprehensive retrospective exhibition, organized by the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, of the substantial oeuvre of this significant American artist, an "independent regionalist" whose variety epitomizes the breadth of modernist art. Featuring full color reproductions of Nordfeldt's art and a thorough account of his professional biography, as well as essays on his relationship with modernist Chicago, his innovations in printmaking, and the crucial role of Emily Abbott Nordfeldt in his artistic production and his legacy, this exhibition catalogue establishes B.J.O. Nordfeldt as a unique and immensely committed artist during the dynamic period of international modernism.
By Gabriel P. Weisberg
Hardcover: 160 pages