Painting

Ulla-Britta Emitslöf-Dejmo made her debut in a solo exhibition in 1952 at the Gallery Modern Art in the Home Environment located on the Strand Road near Djurgården Bridge in Stockholm. The gallery was run by a wife Lindström. The owner was a very enterprising woman who conveyed good art to the interested art audience. “She knew all the keys on Östermalm,” Kurt Dejmo told us. Her specialty was to launch younger artists, often young Gothenburg painters. Many good reviews were written. Gustaf Näsström wrote in Stockholms-Tidningen, among other things, that Ulla was heading for a personal and charged artistry. The painter Otte Sköld, at the time the chief and director of Nationalmuseum (taking office in 1950), and Ulla-Britta’s former teacher, visited the exhibition and acted on behalf of the museum. The data was downgraded during telephone conversations in March 2002 and during visits to the spouses Dejmo at Sörgården, Herrestad, Uddevalla in April 2002. Compare further works by the artist in the museum’s collections: UM005312 - watercolour with a tree study from 1949, UM005506 “White chairs,” oil painting 1950, UM020764 “Flowering archipelago,” oil painting 1976, in the collection of the Uddevalla art association, made available to the museum of Bohusläns. Review under Stockholm Chronicles, written by Emmy Melin, in CONSTREVY number 6 1952 reads: Modern art in a home environment Ulla-Britta Emitslöf-Dejmo, September. The artist is a well-known name from Young Sign. Here she appears mainly as a painter, a colorist of great freshness but not as sensitive in the painterly as in the subtle line system of the drawings. In the oils, she puts up energetic brush strokes that sometimes pull out over the canvas like a tornado. It is mostly healthy shimmering colours with green, blue and purple as dominant. With something of personal frenzy, she portrays fir trees, living with the same nerve as the line in her drawings. That one feels reserved to her painting at its present stage does not mean that one is reserved against her artistry. It has the right nerve. It is in a sickening plant. (Illustrated black and white photo with Flaskstilleben III.) Exhibition text for “Women and art,” 8 March to 6 June 2004 at the Museum of Bohusläns: Ulla-Britta Emitslöf-Dejmo (born 1924) moved in her 20th year from her birthplace Älmhult in Småland. She had won entry for studies at the Sluff Association in Gothenburg. The artist Nils Wedel was a teacher there. He came to mean a lot to her, as did Otte Sköld, in whose painting school in Stockholm Ulla-Britta spent two years. It was during these years that she met her life companion Kurt Dejmo. The artist couple Emitslöf-Dejmo settled in Uddevalla and has become the city faithful. In Ulla-Britta’s paintings there is a great measure of romance and lyric but also perishable. Her unique frames with engraved diaries often reinforce the image content. The text around the painting of the exhibition Flowering archipelago reads “U B Emitslöf-Dejmo has made this frame in the studio at Sörgården Uddevalla a sunny and warm summer day on Monday the twenty-first of the month of June the year nittonhundrasjuttiosex UB Emitslöf-Dejmo Sörgården 9673 Uddevalla.” The work Stilleben has a more concrete enlightenment: “Ulla-Britta Emitslöf Dejmo has made this framework.” In another material - textile - we meet her pictorial world in large tissues or applications for churches, schools, regiments and other public premises. It was not infrequent that she and husband Kurt collaborated in these interior design missions. The South Duty Church in Uddevalla, Bäcke Church in Dalsland and Blåsutöin Versborg are some examples. In the Röhsska Museum’s collections in Gothenburg there is a fraternity of quite different kinds. The title of the picture is King II from 1962-1963. It is a portrait in the series of Swedish kings that Ulla-Britt staged after receiving inspiration from a painting depicting the French Renaissance prince Frans I. The painting is shown/included in “Nature Morte,” Konsthallen Bohusläns museum, May 7 - August 28, 2016. Literature: Swedish Artist Mixicone, Part II 1953. Jonsson, E.: Ulla-Britta Dejmo and Kurt Dejmo. Artists in Bohuslän. BohusläningsAB, Uddevalla 1976. See Bilagepärmen UM5506, B-essay in art science, Stockholm 2006 (?), Ulla Lindh-Strömberg. Ang. curriculum vitae and reviews of the debut exhibition in 1952, see appendix marks UM027724.