Endre Nemes square,
sculpture Galleri 21 Malmö 2025
This is an address that does not exist
We want to sit down at a set table and lie down on mangled linen.
We are less inclined to pick up our rib-eye steak straight from the
slaughterhouse, or to lie down in the evening on the blood-stained
sheets of murder victims. We distinguish between the acceptable and
the unacceptable.
My whole life was a deep sinking into horror. Someone else could have
gotten over it. Someone else could perhaps have coaxed a laugh, to
tame their despair.
from Endre Nemes' foreword in the Academy of Fine Arts catalog for
his 1979 exhibition
I grew up in Högsbo in Gothenburg in Sweden and was about five years old
when I first saw Endre Nemes' public work Marble Intarsia in the center
of the square in Högsbo. My brother, or maybe it was my father,
or maybe it was both my brother and my father, commented on the work
and told me that what I was seeing was modern art.
I remember how beautiful the different colored marble pieces were.
The work was large and overwhelming. Later in my teens, I saw more
paintings by Nemes, including the monumental painting Metaphysical
Caryatids at the Student Union in Gothenburg during jazz and pop concerts.
Nemes' imagery seemed like a mysterious and secretive dream in my
imagination.
In the spring of 2025, I visit the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art in Lund. There is a large donation from Endre Nemes' estate. You can
follow the artist's trail in books, exhibition catalogs, newspaper
articles and sketches on paper and panels. Here are a large number
of sketches that served as preparations for the work on Marble Intarsia at the square in Högsbo. They were made during Endre Nemes' last
year as a teacher at the artschool Valand 1952 - 55. The work at the square has
been given an almost conceptual title that is limited to the material
and the method, even though Nemes otherwise uses titles that describe
the subjects of the pictures. I am looking for another name for the
work Marble Intarsia. But here at the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art there are
no clues that the picture has ever had another title.
There is a contradictory side to Endre Nemes. He
describes in several newspaper articles that he was thwarted, which
is at odds with the artist's external success over a long period of
time. And the extent of the material, which I see in the Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, hardly indicates that he was neglected. As I read on in Endre
Nemes' posthumously published autobiography (Att lyfta upp tiden och
vika den åt sidan, 2002), I reflect on Nemes' perceived alienation
in Swedish society. It may seem that he remained dependent on his
upbringing in central Europe during the First World War and the interwar
period and the later flight from Jewish persecution and the threat
of world war when he was a young adult. The years when Nemes attended
the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague are portrayed almost as a distant
personal golden age, despite material hardship and world turmoil.
Perhaps he longed to return to a lost youth and could not accept that
life conditions had gradually changed. The slaughterhouse metaphor
in the opening quote may be an expression of his alienation. People
in Sweden do not see what I see. They are blind to what reality looks
like. They are so naive.
The tragedy of the twentieth century through two
world wars and the subsequent Cold War was part of Endre Nemes' mental
baggage. Marble Intarsia may be an image representing the disintegration
and grief of a world dissolved by war and destruction. But the viewer
is left alone with possible narrative interpretations and associations
around the image's subject. I can see traces of the Italian Futurists.
There is a woman walking up or down a staircase with Duchamp and subsequent
Dadaism in mind. There's a large figure in the center, reminiscent
of a screaming woman. And there are traces of ancient mythology. I
can see Icarus flying too close to the sun. Perhaps Marble Intarsia
is about a deep immersion in horror, a motif that could never have
found a place in a forward-looking Swedish suburb in the 1950s if
Nemes had revealed that this was what the picture represented.
Ex-post constructions tend to remain uncertain questions
and guesses.
Marble Intarsia found a space in Högsbo in Gothenburg. A square
that for me has become Endre Nemes' place. At the same time, it is
an address that does not exist. And Endre Neme's marble intarsia is
just called Marble Intarsia.
Lars Embäck 2025
