1928 Sao Paulo,
1976 Stockholm

Taking his point of departure in the hackneyed forms and symbols of comic strips, Öyvind Fahlström, a protagonist of New Realism,developed an original style of composite painting in which he criticized the mechanisms of modern consumer society and the marionette-like behavior of those who live in it with an irony reminiscent of Dada
and Surrealism.

 The collage-painting Roufette, UariabJe Painting evokes the manipulability of modern man by means of two central figures whose poses can be changed at will. These are surrounded by partially alienated, partially overpainted motifs from newsreels, war and adventure movies (Tarzan), and illustrated magazines. The media continously expose us, consciously and subconsciously, to two key topics: sex and violence. As Fahlström once said, Picasso reacted to the atrocity of Guernica by using expressionist formal distortion to heighten the ernotional
effect of the figures in his painting. Fahlström, for his part, attempted to "orchestrate data" to rouse viewers' emotional response and under-Painting, 1966 standing. He asked himself whether such irnagery could be made both sensually and aesthetically effective, whether a pattern of facts could become poetry. Whether he succeeded, Fahlström concluded, was For the viewer to decide.
 In his later works, to which the varicolored World Maps belong, the artist began to delineate and describe a "conglomeration of fgures" which took on clearer definition from work to work. With the introduction of a completely colored background, Fahlström stated, he had embarked on a kind of historical painting in which all
types of data and i.deas - historical, economic, poetic, current - were depicted 'un a homogeneous style. For the sake of clarity he recorded and visually coded both t"ne data and their interpretations. Shades of blue designated the U.S.., violet tones Europe, red to yellow the Socialist countries, and green to brown the Third World.
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