Background
Otto Carlsund was born on December 11, 1897 in Saint Petersburg.
Otto Carlsund was born on December 11, 1897 in Saint Petersburg.
Carlsund studied in Dresden in 1921 - 1922, at Christian Krohg in Oslo in 1922 - 1923, and in Paris in 1924 - 1930 at Fernand Léger at the newly founded Académie Moderne.
In 1925 Otto met the artist Le Corbusier and was commissioned to create murals for a cinema he was working on, though the project was eventually shelved, and in the same year he was recommended to create murals for the planned library annex to Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower. Although Mendelsohn eventually abandoned this later project, an example of the designs from the series of paintings that Carlsund had prepared for the Einstein Library - the suite "Rapidité" - was realized in a mural at the Stockholm restaurant Parkrestaurangen Lilla Paris, in connection with the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930. In 1926 Otto was invited by Katherine Dreier and Société Anonyme to participate in her International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, featuring both his mural projects, and over the following years he exhibited several times in Paris, also one more time in New York at Jane Heap's Little Review Gallery in 1928, the Arts Council in 1928, and the Rand School in 1931.
In 1929 Carlsund and van Doesburg, Jean Hélion, Léon Arthur Tutundjian and Marcel Wantz founded the group Art Concret, and the following year they published their joint manifesto. The group was short lived and only exhibited together at three occasions in 1930 as part of larger group exhibitions, the first being at Salon des Surindépendents in Paris in June, followed by Production Paris 1930 in Zürich, and in August at the International exhibition of post-cubist art in Stockholm, curated by Carlsund himself. The Stockholm exhibition was largely a failure, getting harsh judgement from unsupportive critics, and ultimately led to Carlsund's decision to move back to Stockholm. Following van Doesburg's death in 1931, the Art Concret group united with the larger association Abstraction-Création, founded in 1932, though was never formally dissolved.
After 1932, Carlsund was primarily active as an art critic, still painting and creating murals but not exhibiting his art. Following increased domestic attention to geometric abstraction in the 1940s, a retrospective exhibition was held in Stockholm in 1947 to great acclaim. He died on July 25, 1948 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dresdens spektrum: Spader Ess
Dresdens spektrum: Hjärter Kung
Komposition
Fabriken
Wallpainting For Musicroom
Komposition
Arkitektonisk komposition
Diagonal komposition för tambur II
L'Opérateur brun
Composition géométrique
Composition with red dots
Staden på berget
Dresdens spektrum: Hjärter Knekt
Komposition
Muralmålning på manganblå grund
Komposition
Apocalyptic Landscape
Dresdens spektrum: Spader Dam
Bach fuga i grått
Playing cards
Katakombbruden
Dresden's spectrum: The Joker
Sitting cubist woman
Näckros fallos
Framför toalettspegeln
Still life with bottle and green pears
Spik och hammare
Dresdens spektrum: Dresdens hjärta
Empire
Composition
Composition with music instrument
Musician with accordion/Blue bar
VINSKÖRD
Komposition
Konstruktion
Komposition
Otto developed a strict puristic and synthetic style based on mathematical geometric principles.
Together with Theo van Doesburg, Carlsund founded the 1930s Art Concret group.
