Arne Julius Jones, born 20 October 1914 in Borgsjö, died 8 October 1976 in Sollentuna and buried in Stockholm's northern cemetery, was a Swedish artist. Training Arne Jones enrolled as a student at Ålsta Folkhögskola in Medelpad when he was 17 years old. There, during the second year, he met the writer Lars Ahlin. Their deep friendship was lifelong and Lars Ahlin also helped Arne Jones finance his studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where he was accepted in 1942. Before that, when he came to Stockholm in 1936, he attended the Technical School's evening course in advertising drawing. In the Ornamental Modeling class, he successfully honed his craft and subsequently obtained an apprenticeship contract with a stone and sculpture company. The work included leaving freshly sharpened chisels to sculptors. With this he came into contact with Brother Hjorth, who became something of a teacher.

 

Concrete art

Arne Jones was a student of Eric Grate at the Academy of Arts in Stockholm and was one of the leading innovative sculptors together with, among others, Palle Pernevi. The new art was labeled concrete at the Galerie Blanche in 1949. Olle Bonniér, Pierre Olofsson, Karl Axel Pehrson and Arne Jones participated in this exhibition, which more than any other proclaimed concrete art and was a definite breakthrough for the participants. In the same year, the World Sports Exhibition was also held and in the magazine Prisma, Olle Bonniér published a famous manifesto. The artists' group presented a new and concrete action program for art, with the aim of spreading art into the public environment. Jones developed his sculptures from a basic form, which could be built up and varied in different ways. The latter material is usually based on poetic classicism, a desire to combine modern materials with a classical theme.

 

Breakthrough and success

Arne Jones had his real breakthrough in 1947 and is represented with sculptures in many Swedish cities and in Swedish art museums, including the Bonnierska portrait collection. He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts 1961–1971. Together with Sivert Lindblom, he represented Sweden at the Biennale in Venice in 1968. Due to the unrest in connection with the May Revolt in France spreading to the rest of Europe, however, the Swedish pavilion was closed in protest against police surveillance. Arne Jones' work had already been vandalized and covered with black plastic. Despite a strong awareness of time, Arne Jones was relatively uninterested in images from art history. However, he confessed to a couple of sculptors: Henri Laurens and Constantin Brâncuși. Of the sculptors of his own generation, he regarded Martin Holmgren as his soul mate.

 

Perhaps his most famous work is the early Cathedral from 1947, which is installed in Gothenburg and in Västertorp, Stockholm. It is also found at SSU's course site Bommersvik, where it is also used as a logo. It is a Neo-Gothic construction, a stylization of the dance of two ballet dancers resulting in a lace arch. Similar kinetic energy is found in a number of his subsequent works. On a stamp from 1978 there is his sculpture Room without branch (1951). The work's name is a play on words based on his friend Lars Ahlin's short story The house has no branch. The title wants to mark the finality of the sculpture, everything takes place within the floors of the stems. There is no primary viewing area here, as it is a round sculpture to be seen from many aspects. The sculpture forms a loop that leads the eye on a journey of infinity. The photographer and artist Jan Helge Jansson created the photo template for this engraving and documented much of Arne Jones's art on photo and film.