Foreword, Sculpture Architecture, Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art

For several years now, the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, in collaboration with Lunds Konsthall, has been planning a retrospective double exhibition of Sivert Lindblom in Lund. Together, these two exhibitions will be his largest exhibition. While Lunds Konsthall showcases his sculptural work in a retrospective from the 1950s onwards, the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art highlights his extensive activity as a monumental artist through a selection of sketches, models, photographs, and other documents. Our exhibition thus becomes the first comprehensive documentation of Sivert Lindblom's work in this field.

From my own high school days in Borås, I remember Sivert Lindblom's first public artwork: together with Olle Adrin, Sivert created an unconventionally designed brick wall with slanted courses in Gustav Adolf Parish Hall. The year was 1957, and since then, he has undertaken approximately 35 more commissions, up to the current work on the sculptural design of a new viaduct at Haga Norra in Stockholm. During these 35 years, Sivert Lindblom has become known as the artist in Sweden who, more than anyone else, has worked with the relationship between sculpture and architecture. His architectural interest is certainly no coincidence: in his younger years, he worked for a time with Sigurd Lewerentz, and he has become known for his collaboration with Peter Celsing. It was in the early 1970s that he seriously began working on his own artistic design commissions, including Garnisonen, Riksbanken, Västra Skogen subway station, and Fersenska Palatset, all in Stockholm. Among the most notable commissions in recent years are the sculptural embellishment of Frescati at Stockholm University and the redesign of Blasieholmstorg in the heart of Stockholm.

Where does the boundary between art and architecture lie, one sometimes wonders when faced with Sivert Lindblom's major design commissions. A few years ago, Sivert designed the facade for the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art's extension, which was inaugurated in the spring of 1988. Here, one thus encounters the artist in a dual role as both artist and architect – a combination that is not uncommon in art history but is rare today. Where does architecture end and art begin in this fully integrated work?

A division would be entirely artificial in a case like this: it concerns both architecture and a facade that is in itself a public artwork. And the facade is truly a facade in the literal sense of the word, a face, and as an aesthetic and symbolic affirmation, one sees a turned profile in a double bronze edition protruding from the facade. There has been talk of postmodern classicism in connection with this facade and other works by Sivert. But in that case, it is a method and an idiom that he anticipated long before the term "postmodernism" began to be used. Sivert Lindblom's artistry is characterized by unusual consistency and a logical internal development.

The commission for the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art originally also included proposals and ideas for other parts of the museum, including a new entrance and a sculpture avenue, which would open the museum to the south as well. The ideas have been put on hold but are not outdated. The artist has donated all these sketches to the museum, and in a smaller side exhibition, we are showing a selection of them.

We thank Sivert and Marianne Lindblom both for the donation and for their tireless work in bringing the exhibitions in Lund to fruition; Marianne Lindblom has, incidentally, participated in several of Sivert's projects. A warm thank you also to architect Stefan Alenius, who wrote the personally formulated introduction to the catalog, and a special thank you to the Peter and Birgitta Celsing Foundation, which has provided a generous contribution to the printing of the catalog. Finally, I would also like to thank Lunds Konsthall's curator, Cecilia Nelson, for the excellent cooperation.

Lund, January 1993