Olle Bonniér

Concretist and teacher.

Olle Bonniér was one of the Men of 1947 and a central figure in Swedish Concrete art and art education.

Olle Bonniér was born in 1925 and was one of the youngest of the artists who took part in the exhibition Young Art in Stockholm in 1947, the so-called Men of 1947. The exhibition launched Concrete art in Sweden, in which pictures are built from pure geometric forms, lines and colours without representing anything.

Bonniér quickly became one of the movement’s leading exponents and perhaps its most theoretically minded member. He explored how lines, rhythms and areas of colour can create movement and space in a picture, and he was interested in the connections between visual art, music and architecture. His work is marked by precision but also by a playful rhythm, sometimes with dense, vibrating patterns of lines.

He also made public art and decorations for buildings, where he wanted colour and form to work together with the architecture. For him art was not just something hanging on a wall but part of the environment in which people live.

For many years Bonniér worked as a teacher and played a major role in art education in Sweden. He lived a long life and died in 2016. He is regarded as one of the central figures of Swedish Concrete art and an important link between artists, architects and educators in the post-war period.

• The post-war era
• The post-war era and Concretism