coming exhibitions

DICK BEER
IMPRESSIONIST AND CUBIST
2 JUNE - 9 SEPTEMBER 2012

Millesgården presents some 50 paintings by the modernist Dick Beer (1893-1938) who was active as a painter primarily in France but has remained relatively unknown in Sweden. As a young man in Paris in the 1910s, Beer experimented with different styles and his particular brand of impressionist painting and interpretation of cubism are of distinguishing quality. At times he has been regarded as a cubist in the spirit of Paul Cézanne.

Dick Beer was born in England and after being orphaned came to Sweden in 1907, first living with relatives until he got his own accommodation in Västergötland. At an early age he was impressed by the melting pot of Paris and in 1912 he exchanged the Royal Academy for the French capital and rented a studio in the vicinity of Montparnasse. He participated in the popular lectures at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére and at the Académie Colarossi.

In 1913, aged 20, Dick Beer held his debut exhibition in Stockholm which proved to be a great success. The year after, 1914, he painted his impressions on study tours, first to Venice, Florence and Sicily and later to Tunisia, Morocco and Spain. His painting was fresh, luminous and impressionist.

When the First World War broke out, Dick Beer, like so many other artists, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He said he came from Switzerland and gave his name as Herman Beer, as the French army would never have accepted his English background.

The war was in many ways a decisive factor for Dick Beer?s life and art. In 1915 he was severely injured in a grenade attack that resulted in profound deafness and a nervous condition that would plague him for the rest of his life. Soon after the attack he was admitted to hospital for a convalescent period at Château de Rochefort where the artist Fernand Léger was also a patient. During this time Beer continued to paint his impressionist canvasses.

After the war, around 1918, Dick Beer?s artistic development took a new direction. He painted picture after picture in his own cubistic style without rules or laws. It was an emotive cubism, sometimes combined with naïve playfulness and futuristic characteristics.

Many of his paintings were conceived during his travels. Landscapes, of with the focus on houses, were transformed into cubistically composed edifices. Another recurring motive was the horse, which was of special significance as his father, John Beer, illustrated them for a living. In England John Beer was best known for his watercolours depicting hunting and racing scenes. But above all he portrayed successful gallopers for the English upper classes. As a protégé of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) John Beer was ensured an introduction to the right clientele. He was an intellectual man who moved in London?s cultural circles, visiting the homes of, among others, Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.

After the end of the First World War, Dick Beer was severely criticised for his ?pseudo cubist? pictorial language. His expressionist and impressionist paintings were better received.

Dick Beer suffered his entire life from the injuries he sustained in the war and he become addicted to the morphine prescribed to alleviate the pain. Through the years he alternated exhibiting in both French and Swedish salons and galleries. In 1934 he acquired a permanent studio on Bergsgatan in Stockholm, but continued to travel regularly to Southern Europe.

In 1938 Dick Beer died from complications arising from a severe case of bronchitis that resulted in abscesses in his lungs.
He is represented at, among others: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Norrköping Art Museum, Östergötland Museum; Gothenburg Museum of Art; Borås Museum of Art, Malmö Museum and the Swedish State's Collection of Portraits, Gripsholm.

Image from a streamer for Childrens Day in Humlegården, Stockholm, 1947