“Preferably Avant-garde Art” – Schyl’s donation at RAVINEN

RAVINEN has invited Sune Nordgren to curate the spring exhibition “Preferably Avant-garde Art” – Schyl’s donation at RAVINEN. Sune Nordgren is a well-known Swedish museologist, artist, designer and art critic. He is also a board member of the Ulla and Gustav Kraitz cultural foundation, which supports RAVINEN.

As, among other things, director of Malmö Konsthall during the 1990s, he had a decisive role in showing international contemporary art in Scania. Thus also in the purchases of art made by the representatives of the spouses Schyl’s donation, with the intention of promoting contemporary and avant-garde art. A collection that today belongs to the Malmö Art Museum.

The question of what Malmö Art Museum’s new location and role should be is now more relevant than ever. The museum has an important art collection for the entire region, and RAVINEN is proud of the collaboration with the Malmö Art Museum, which allows parts of the collection of international art from the end of the 20th century to be shown to a wide audience, even outside of Malmö. The exhibition shows an interesting selection from Schyl’s donation, with Sune Nordgren’s initiated and personal presentations of the artworks.

Welcome to experience great international artistry at RAVINEN in Båstad.

Charlotta Jönsson, director

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In 1983, the spouses Karin and Jules Schyl donated a stock portfolio worth several million and a studio full of art to Malmö Konsthall. The idea was that everything would be converted into money to buy art for – “preferably avant-garde art”, as it said in the gift deed. Jules Schyl was a valued artist and many better-off homes in Malmö had at least one Schyl work on the walls, so even the artworks in the estates sold well. The donation’s purchase funds rose by another million.

For a little more than a decade, the donors’ confidants, together with three art gallery managers, purchased over 150 works that today give a subjective, but still fairly representative picture of contemporary art at the end of the 20th century. The collection contains works by some of the foremost international artists, but also some of the best from the Nordic countries. The collection is a manifestation of its era, even with a Euro-American perspective at the time, with a few Japanese elements and a, perhaps just as typical of the time, skewed distribution in terms of female artists. Ten years ago the collection was transferred to the Malmö Art Museum and the idea was that this would strengthen the collections. But also contribute to speeding up the process of building a new and modern art museum in Malmö. After more than forty years, that idea is just as relevant today.

In RAVINEN, a selection from Schyl’s donation is shown with works by the following artists:

Donald Baechler, Barton Lidice Beneš, Bård Breivik, Gilbert & George, Antony Gormley, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Per Kirkeby, Imi Knoebel, Jiří Kolář, Ted Kurahara, Axel Lieber, Richard Long, Nino Longobardi, Francesco Motolese, Claes Oldenburg, Paul Osipow, Arnulf Rainer, Andres Serrano, Yasse Tabuchi, Leon Tarasewicz, Gabriele Trinchera, Bjørn-Sigurd Tufta, Victor Vasarely, Sverre Wyller and Jules Schyl himself.

Sune Nordgren, curator