Collection: Öyvind Fahlström

Öyvind Fahlström (1928–1976) was a Swedish-Brazilian artist, poet and playwright whose work occupied an unusual position between concrete poetry, Fluxus, Pop art and political activism. Born in São Paulo and raised in Sweden, Fahlström developed a practice that incorporated board games, variable paintings, text, comics, television and mass-media imagery into works of political complexity and formal inventiveness. His variable paintings — magnetic elements on vinyl that could be rearranged by viewers or performers — are among the most distinctive works of their period. Fahlström represented Sweden at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and exhibited at Documenta 4 (1968) and Documenta 5 (1972). His work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.