Yrjö Edelmann

Wrapping paper

1989

Yrjö Edelmann was a Swedish painter celebrated for his Hyperrealist paintings of clumsily wrapped packages. To create his smooth trompe-l’oeil surfaces, Edelmann built up thin layers of oil paint using a traditional Renaissance glazing technique, gradually achieving the highest possible degree of dexterity and illusionism. By only depicting wrapped parcels, his oeuvre maintains a pervasive sense of tension and mystery, leading viewers to speculate what could be hidden beneath the wrapping paper. Born on October 17, 1941 in Helinski, Finland, he attended the University College of Arts in Stockholm before being inspired by James Rosenquist and upending his traditional artistic background. Similar to his contemporary Photorealist peer Claudio Bravo, Edelmann said that “one day in 1976, I looked out of the window in my studio and saw just this one single cloud. If I’d just painted that it would’ve just been an ordinary landscape painting, and I didn’t want that, but then I suddenly noticed a piece of crinkled paper on my table, and so I cut it to the shape of a cloud, and painted that against a realistic landscape.” He died March 14, 2016 in the Upplands-Bro Municipality of Sweden, and is remembered as one of Sweden’s most acclaimed contemporary artists.