The Wedding

The Wedding

1970

Oil on canvas

Mått 97,00 x 110,00 cm Ram 99,00 x 112,00 x 4,00 cm

GKM 1854

Purchase, 1970

In The Wedding (1970), the subject was not something the artist had actually seen, but rather a photograph from the Second World War which depicts a man showing a woman how to put on a gas mask. They are seen obliquely from below, their faces lit by a lamp beneath them. Between the couple are two elderly women whose faces are in shadow. The title goes back to Billgren’s own misreading of the picture when a child, as he had misinterpreted it as a wedding ceremony, and the two figures in the background as the witnesses. The simple act of trying on a gas mask takes on the aspect of a religious sacrament. Of course, to a child the adult world can seem incomprehensible and mysterious. Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014

Kristoffer Arvidsson, Per Dahlström, Björn Fredlund, Anna Hyltze, Philippa Nanfeldt, Isabella Nilsson, Johan Sjöström, Samlingen Göteborgs konstmuseum, red. Kristoffer Arvidsson, Per Dahlström, Anna Hyltze, Göteborgs konstmuseum, Göteborg 2014., p. 430, ill. p. 423 Lena Boëthiusoch Lars Nittveoch Douglas Feuk, Ola Billgren, red. Lena Boëthius och Ola Billgren, Göteborgs konstmuseum och Sundsvalls Museum, Göteborg, 1997., ill. p. 13 Douglas Feuk, Livslång rörelse. En essä om Ola Billgrens konstnärskap., Clara Wendel, Ellerströms, 2024., ill. p. 180