Eddie Figge (1904-2003)
Sweden
1958
Mixed media on paper, Signed and dated
6” x 8 1/3”

Eddie Figge spent most of the 1920s and 30s in Paris and touring Europe as a performer in Ernst Rolf’s revue. While in Rome, she encountered Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel and the Pietà in Saint Peter’s. It was this profound encounter that inspired her to become a visual artist. She continued to dance and act, on stage and in films, until 1939, when she met Roland Kempe, who encouraged Figge to dedicate herself to painting. Figge then studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and at Otte Sköld’s painting school. Her first solo exhibition was not until 1954, at the Gummesson’s Gallery in Stockholm.

Figge’s work garnered acclaim in the 1960s and was consistently exhibited at galleries and art museums in Sweden and overseas through the 1990s. She showed regularly at Galleri Burén, and also in Lund, Norrköping and Gävle, Finland, and New York. She participated in the 1989 São Paulo Biennale, showing a selection of her space paintings. Lilijevalch in Stockholm held a retrospective of her work in 2003 when she was 99 years old.

We love the organic abstraction of Eddie Figge’s work, its spontaneous lines and gentle energy. Figge is included in the permanent collections of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris and Skissernas Museum in Lund.