Einar Jolin | 1890-1976
Johan Einar Jolin, born August 7, 1890 in Adolf Fredrik's parish in Stockholm, died August 29, 1976 in St. Göran's parish in Stockholm, was a Swedish artist best known for his decorative, slightly naïve and expressionist paintings. After studying at Konstfack in Stockholm in 1906 and at the Artists' Association's painting school, Jolin traveled with his two friends and colleagues Isaac Grünewald and Einar Nerman to Paris for further studies at Henri Matisse's academy in the years 1908 to 1914. Jolin painted portraits, still lifes and urban landscapes, always focusing on accentuating what he himself called the "beauty" of the subject. He worked mainly in oil and watercolor, with delicate brush strokes and bright colors. His most noted works are the paintings of Stockholm from the 1910s and 1920s in his characteristic naive style. Jolin made many trips where he gathered impressions and inspiration for his paintings. He traveled to Africa, India and the West Indies, but preferred the countries around the Mediterranean, especially the island of Capri where he also exhibited. Among other things, he had several solo exhibitions at the Liljevalch art gallery in Stockholm and in 1954 he toured the USA with a traveling exhibition, when Dag Hammarskjöld bought a painting for his office in the UN building.
Upbringing and education Einar Jolin was born on 7 August 1890 in Stockholm. He was the son of Professor Severin Jolin and grandson of the actor Johan Christopher Jolin. He grew up at Kammakargatan 45 in Jolinska Huset, a three-story terraced house with a garden, built by his grandfather. Einar thus grew up in a place near Tegnérlunden, Adolf Fredrik's church and Vasaparken, which may have influenced his depictions of houses, rooftops and views of Stockholm in his paintings.[11] His parents, his brother Erik, his two sisters Ingrid and Signe, but also his grandmother Mathilde Wigert-Jolin and aunt Ellen Jolin, who was an artist and who was the first to teach Jolin the basics of painting, also lived in the house. Jolin began his artistic education in 1906 at the Technical School in Stockholm (later known as Konstfack). The school's teaching focused mainly on painting technique, but Jolin was more interested in expression. During the year, he therefore began to search for other educations.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Artists' Association ran a school on Glasbruksgatan in Stockholm. Jolin applied there in the fall of 1907. His future teacher Karl Nordström assessed the drawings and Jolin entered the school the same year. There, Jolin became part of an inner circle of artists who would later become known as De Unga and the men of 1909. Others in the group consisted of Isaac Grünewald, Leander Engström, Birger Simonsson and Gösta Sandels. Jolin described the students at the school as: "... a lot of individuals with long hair, big scarves and slouch hats put on askew in a way that really impressed me who was only seventeen and the youngest of the team. The most amazing of them everyone was, of course, Isaac, who had longer and raven-black hair than everyone else and a fluttering purple scarf. We became good friends." But the education in Stockholm was short-lived, as early as the spring of 1908 the association's school closed. Paris In 1908, Jolin and Isaac Grünewald moved to Paris.
The Swedish artist and forester Carl Palme had already gotten to know Henri Matisse in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and helped him find suitable premises for Matisse's new art school Académie Matisse. At first the school was housed in an abandoned nunnery in central Paris. Jolin started at the school together with Grünewald and Leander Engström, where several of their artist friends from Stockholm had already found a place. At school, Jolin developed his confident stylized linework which he combined with bright and clear colors. Jolin's time at the school was more fruitful than any of his previous educations and the experience of having an established artist as a mentor was important to his development as an artist. Nevertheless, Matisse's influence on his young pupils should not be exaggerated. Through the amount of model studies at school, Jolin developed a spontaneously fast brushstroke.[ He preferred to paint models and still lifes,[30] but during a visit to the south of France in 1911, his earliest landscape paintings were added.[31] At school, Jolin also got his first nickname where he used to be called "The Puppy" because he was the youngest student.[26][32] Dring his time in Paris, Jolin also became good friends with Nils Dardel. In 1913 Jolin spent some time in the medieval town of Senlis where he depicted its street life before returning to Stockholm the following year.
Style
Although Jolin was influenced by Matisse, the Eastern art he discovered at the Musée Guimet in Paris was even more important to his style. Japonism was an important influence on early modernist visual art, and Chinese and Japanese art came to form the basis for the decorative, somewhat naive style in bright colors that Jolin developed in the 1910s and 1920s. Jolin's style deviates from the traditional Expressionists, through his simplified motifs and through the fact that his paintings sought to depict reality rather than emotion. Just like Dardel, Jolin painted in a naïve manner before the art direction had been introduced in Sweden.
Both Jolin and Dardel were clearly inspired by French naïves, not only by the publican Rousseau but also by Séraphine Louis who lived in Senlis. There was also the art writer Wilhelm Uhde, a specialist in naive painting, which became of great importance to Einar Jolin's style. Naivism was also not completely foreign to Matisse but is not particularly prominent in his art. Jolin was also inspired by early modernists such as Cézanne and Seurat as well as older masters such as Rubens, Watteau and Chardin whom he studied at the Louvre.
Expressionism
In the years 1913 to 1914, Jolin began to create his own naïve and blonde variant of expressionism. By the late 1910s his painting had become more expressive and his forms more plastic, but in 1916 his work was still primarily inspired by his years in France. That spring, the members of the Artists' Union were offered the chance, together with their young students, to present the "new painting" to the Swedish public. This was the second exhibition at the newly opened Liljevalch art gallery at Djurgården in Stockholm. The exhibition Konstnärsförbundarna included, among others, Leander Engström, Isaac Grünewald, Gösta Sandels, Birger Simonsson and Jolin, where the latter presented 13 paintings. Two such different artistic temperaments as Einar Jolin and GAN were both called expressionists. It was a term that for most of the 1910s was on everyone's lips in all possible and impossible contexts.
One of Expressionism's most important advocates Herwarth Walden and his gallery Der Sturm in Berlin presented a very significant exhibition for Sweden in 1915, Schwedische Expressionisten, in which Jolin participated with six paintings, three of which were views of Stockholm. participants were Isaac Grunewald, Edward Hald, GAN and Sigrid Hjertén. In the autumn of 1915, Jolin and GAN were presented together at an exhibition at Lund University's art museum. Despite the differences between them, it remained friends in 1916–1919 during GAN's years in Stockholm. Common to both of them was a slight weariness before Isaac Grünewald's increasingly dominant role among the young Swedish artists. For Einar Jolin, however, expressionism never became a program, either in the spirit of GAN or anyone else.[84] During the years 1925–1935, Jolin's blonde painting is characterized by fine shades of gray and pastel colors. Over time, it became elegant still lifes with Eastern porcelain, often placed on a reflective mahogany table. He also painted several portraits of people from Swedish society. In the 1930s, Nils Palmgren, Jolin's biographer, named a group of Swedish artists purists, a term originally coined by the French artists Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. Palmgren referred to artists such as Torsten Jovinge, Erik Byström, Wilhelm Wik and Helge Linden, but according to Palmgren, Jolin could also be called a purist, because he worked with pure colors, clear outlines and well-ordered motifs.
