Sigelle "Selected Works"
Trygve Lie Gallery
This event has ended.
Sigelle was born Sigrid Elisabeth Lindforss on November 2, 1900 in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a young opera student in Dresden when she met Gösta Oldenburg, a Swedish diplomat; soon they married, and moved to Chicago in 1936. While raising two sons, Claes and Richard, Sigelle continued a career in music, teaching as well as giving recitals. In the 1950s her pastime of making Christmas cards for friends developed into an interest in making art. Deeply personal yet resonant in its themes and form, the work "just comes out," Sigelle explained, "and I have to do it as well as I can." Using collage, felt pen and other media, Sigelle created multifaceted constructions of uninhibited color and inventive configurations. A critic wrote of her culminating exhibition in April 1959 at the Swedish Club of Chicago, "What strikes one most is perhaps the rich and luxuriant colors, the high-pitched and brilliant color scale that many of the paintings demonstrate." After Gösta's retirement as Consul General, the couple settled in New York in 1962 where Sigelle was actively involved with the American-Scandinavian Foundation, serving as program head of the New York chapter. Sigelle's works were distributed among friends or stored away though she continued making cards. Sigelle died on March 17, 1984. "I am used to paint and work alone and to sing while I work," Sigelle once remarked. We are very glad her close friend, Elfi von Kantzow Alvin, remembered the work and has realized Sigelle's dream of showing it in New York.
Media
Schedule
from January 13, 2011 to April 03, 2011