At Banfill-Locke, exhibit portrays evolution of an influential artist

Elof Wedin, a Swedish immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1919, worked for years as an industrial boilermaker. But in his time off, he devoted himself to his passion — art — producing thousands of pieces, and he became a leading modern painter in Minnesota.

The north Minneapolis artist died in 1983 at age 81.

Now, 25 pieces that give a sense for how Wedin's work evolved over his 50-plus-year career can be seen in an exhibit at the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley. "Elof Wedin: A Minnesota Modern" runs through Nov. 29.

Bethany Whitehead, executive director at the Banfill, said the exhibit represents a departure for the center. "Normally, we show living artists we work with and know." Also, the center doesn't usually have the budget for retrospective-type shows, "so this is a special thing," she said.

Wedin had ties to the Isanti County city of Cambridge, and several years ago, his family gifted nearly 300 works to the Cambridge Center for the Arts. The understanding was that some pieces would be exhibited fairly regularly, while others would be sold to support the facility's operating expenses, according to Sharon Howell of the center.

The vast majority of Wedin's works are oil on canvas, though some are oil on fiberglass and others are pastels. "Some paintings are very high impasto style so he used a lot of paint," Howell said.

While the Cambridge center has exhibited his work, it was "excited to move it closer to the metro, to get more of an audience for his exciting career," Whitehead said. The Cambridge center is collaborating with the Banfill on the exhibit.

Whitehead said she had seen Wedin's work before but didn't know much about him.

She has been struck by his style. Wedin drew from the landscape, but "he has a way of giving a different light to it." He was radical in his interpretation of color and light, she said. Many landscape artists today even stick to the actual colors they see in nature, she added.

"Hopefully people appreciate the movement, the landscapes that don't look like landscapes by the end," she said.

It's also good for the community "to see an artist who gained some recognition, who did some important development for the art world that we're now a part of," Whitehead said.

Evolution of a painter

In the 1920s, Wedin studied at the Minnesota School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and at the Art Institute of Chicago.

He began by doing portraits. Often, his family modeled for him. However, that style was on the way out, with the camera coming into play. "He wanted to go beyond that," Whitehead said.

He got a couple of mural commissions through a program that evolved into the Works Progress Administration (WPA), one of the major government initiatives of the Depression era. Works of his can still be found at post offices in Litchfield, Minn., and South Dakota.

Most of the WPA artists "stuck to more representational work. Elof went a bit deeper," Howell said. That is, he "developed his own abstract geometric style, flattening space with no perspective and introducing an arbitrary paint palette," a prepared statement reads.

One piece at the Banfill exhibit is called "Stillwater." Another depicts Lake Superior. Another one is "Minneapolis street scene." That was from around 1930. "At that point, he was still leaning toward realism. It didn't last," Howell said.

A painting of his wife, Lillian, from 1949, is representational. In 1950, he re-imagined the same picture in a cubist style.

As Wedin went along, doing mostly landscape-based work, the imagery gets to the point where "you can't identify it. It's more about capturing the essence of an area," as opposed to recognizing the landscape, Howell said.

Wedin never returned to realism. "He just continued and became more abstract as it carried him," Howell said.

A leading modernist painter

Wedin's works will also be on view as part of an upcoming exhibit in St. Paul. "Minnesota Modern: Four Artists of the Twentieth Century" will highlight his career and those of Dewey Albinson, Cameron Booth and Clement Haupers. The show at the James J. Hill mansion will open Nov. 22 and run through March 22, 2015.

Afton Press will release a book by the same title this spring, said Brian Szott, the art curator at the Minnesota History Center and a co-author of the book.

His essay, "Elof Wedin: Blue Collar Modernist," speaks to how the artist always identified with his working-class roots. He also brought a blue-collar work ethic to art making, Szott said. The prolific Wedin painted all the time, and he created a huge body of work.

As a teacher at what is now the Minnetonka Art Center, Wedin "had a small following of students. That also adds to his influence," Szott said.

Wedin participated in various group shows at the Walker Art Center. He also snagged several one-man shows at the museum. His work "Stockholm Harbor" is in the Walker's permanent collection.

Wedin had an affinity for his native Sweden. He was also fond of Minnesota's North Shore, probably because he found it similar to his homeland's rocky coastline, Szott said.

Wedin also gained exposure at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, at the Minnesota State Fair and in numerous venues in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Colorado and Florida.

Still, "It was the local art environment that sustained him," which was typical of artists of his generation, Szott said.

Anna Pratt is a Minneapolis freelance writer. She can be reached at annaprattjournalist@gmail.com.