EDELSTAM Fabian (Sweden)

Mixed techniques

Guest

Artworks

“Green Cary Grant”

-“Yellow Anita Ekberg”

“Magenta Grace Kelly”

“Purple Queen”

Fabian Edelstam was born in Stockholm in 1965 and lives in Paris. He graduated from Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm in 1989 and from the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1991.

Edelstam works with a technique which mixes painting and photography according to the principle of mosaics. Since 1990 he has resided in Paris, haunted by the omnipresence of history.

It is in this parallel world that Fabian Edelstam draws his inspiration and strength, building bridges to the past, thanks to his childhood memories, his deep interest in history and his desire to understand our present time so precarious and sometimes absurd.

It’s an anachronistic escape to reminiscences of a past idyll: romantic, political, poetic and nostalgic. It is an entry into the atmospheres of the 18th century, the Roaring Twenties, the Trente Glorieuses, ... It is there that we can - according to the creations of Fabian Edelstam - find values, enchantment and faith in a polarized and nihilistic society.

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“Edelstam is splitting the image and reconstructing it. He is a premodernist and a postmodernist. His sense for the image goes back far into the past, as does his pedigree. He is as fascinated by the golden Byzantine icons as by the posterlike icons of our time, but seeks a deeper reality by breaking them into pieces and putting them together again. But, as if it were a childhood memory or an historic event, some little square will remain missing. It is from these ponctures his art creates a a sense of authenticity, his portraits become real, his faces become human”

H.E Mr. Ingemar Lindahl, writer, former Ambassador of Sweden

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Fabian Edelstam has frequently undertaken commissions, for example the UN/the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Swiss Confederation (CH), UNESCO, the Swedish embassy in Paris, The Wallenberg Foundations, Banque Havilland (Monaco, London & Luxemburg), Grand Hôtel in Stockholm, the filmmakers Merchant-Ivory, eOffice in the UK, the Swiss bank Banque Mirabaud, the lawfirm Bird & Bird (Paris, Madrid and Abu Dhabi), White & Case (Brussels) Bonnier Publications, the law firms Glatzova & Co in Prague and Dewey & LeBeuf in Paris, Mission of Sweden to NATO, Ralph Lauren, Ferrari at Silverstone and the Italian company Motta.

Since 1997, Edelstam has completed a large number of commissioned portraits, mainly in London, Paris and Milan (amongst these, the portraits of Giorgio Armani in 2004, Ralph Lauren 2009 and the former President of the Swiss Confederation, Adolf Ogi in 2011, Queen Silvia of Sweden 2013.). In 2006 his triptych of de Gaulle was purchased by kind courtesy of Champagne Taittinger for the museum Mémorial Charles de Gaulle, near the Generals residence in Colombey-Les-Deux-Eglises, France. In 2015 the unveiling ceremony of Edelstam’s portrait of the European statesman Paul-Henri Spaak took place in the European Parliament in Brussels, in the presence of Mrs Antoinette Spaak (daughter of P-H Spaak), the commissioner Mrs Cecilia Malmström and Mr Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament. During the bilateral Swedish state visit to Monaco 2017 Edelstam’s portraits of H.S.H Prince Albert II of Monaco and HRH Prince Carl-Philip of Sweden was solemnly handed over to the two princes. In 2019 the portrait of the Balkan War-hero General Marinov solemnly was handed over to the National Museum of Military History in Sofia (Bulgaria) during a ceremony, in the presence of the Ambassador of Sweden to Bulgaria.

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