C O HULTÉN

As an artist he is self-taught. His first works depicted mostly landscapes that alternated with scenes of the run down working area of his hometown. Towards the end of the 30-s his paintings developed and became more like fantasy expressionism.  The impulses from the cubistic and the surrealistic painters began to show, even though it at this time in Sweden was rather difficult to gain any access to the contemporary art that was around. The outweighing dominance was from the post-impressionism and a softened French influence of decorative expressionism. The close proximity to Denmark where a much more open art life flourished became very important. In Copenhagen in 1938, a large exhibition of van Gogh made a big impression and the following year Picassos “Guernica” did the same. Radical magazines on art and smaller prints about modern art were also printed in Denmark, publications of this kind could not be found in Sweden. In 1940 a just opened atelier-exhibition had to be canceled, as Hultén was drafted into the military. One could see it as a positive coincidence that a mail order was dropped in the military confinement. It was the book by Alfred H. Barr “Picasso: Forty Years of his Art”. Hultén had ordered this book in 1939 from USA, and it became his first true confrontation with Picasso’s art. Hultén became exited by works of an, at the time unknown artist in Malmö by the name of Max Walter Svanberg, and proposed the founding of an exhibition group of surrealistic artists, and naming it “Minotaur”. The group consisted of five artists and in 1943 they organized an exhibition in Malmö. All the critics devastatingly criticized the shown works. The group dispatched soon after due to personal differences.
The working relationship with Svanberg was continued; with the objective to found a new art union. This happened in 1945 with the joining of more artists. At the same time a friend introduced CO Hultén to the idea “Imaginism”, this then gave name to the new group “Imaginists”. Ingemar Leckius interpreted the idea “Imaginism” in an essay as a “Word prism”, and he wrote:” It means Image and Imagine, Imaginary and Imagination, picture (own Metaphors) and the own image and the imaginary power. Imaginism must surely also mean to create a picture and last but not least the picture of the creation of the picture”. The works by Hultén were four years in a row rejected by the local art association’s jury, and at the same time he was banned from renting the municipal facilities for an exhibition.
For a period of some years, starting around 1945, he began experimenting with method and form. The pictures bore witness to their organic character, a free abstraction. His different methods as Décalcomanie, Fotogramm, Frottage, were added too with two of Hultén’s own techniques that were called “Heliogramm” and “Imprimage”.
A book – “Dreams from the leaves of the hands”, with a selection of frottage – reproductions, came out 1947 in an exclusive edition. This was the kick-off for the registration of the publishing business “Image” with the chamber of commerce.
This arouses positive attention and caused a further artist, Anders Österlin, to join the group. He later came to be part of the inner circle of the Imaginists.
Hultén spent the fall of 1947 in Paris, where the big Surrealistic Manifestation took place in the Galerie Maeght. Here for the first time Hultén saw Matta, Lam, Bellmer and others. He met Fernand Léger as well as Breton, Brauner, Herold and other members of the Surrealist – Circle. The visit to the “Musée de L’Homme” became an experience that would stand out and awoke an early interest for Folk-art and art from outside the European continent. Hultén bought his first African Object; this became the beginning of a lifelong collecting of old African Art.
He went to visit Hauterives, 70 km south of Lyon, the country mailman Ferdinand Cheval’s (1836-1924) imaginative surrealistic sculpture palace “Palais Ideal”.
Hultén’s first one-man exhibition took place 1948 in the university town of Lund, with the already compulsory unfriendly comments: “- almost all seems to derive from an unhealthy fantasy life with more psychoanalytical and maybe literary, rather than artistic interest”. The hand-made lithographic Colored poster, would disappear several times during the week, it was seemingly admired by a large group of collectors.
During the same year, the publishing firm “Image” released a graphic work portefuille “Imaginisterna” (The Imaginists).
In 1949 CO Hultén was invited as a guest exhibiter with the Avant-garde Group “Spiralen” in Copenhagen.
Asger Jorn visited Hultén and told about the founding of “Cobra”, a union made up of artists from Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. He uttered the wish that the Imaginists should join this movement.
Hultén and other members of the “Cobra”-group participated in 1948, in an exhibition at the weekend house, belonging to the Danish architect students Art academy, in Bregnerd, north of Copenhagen, in a “Cobra”- congress.
The same year he drove with his motorbike to Andorra and yet again to “Palais Ideal”.
The Dutch “Cobra”- artists – Constant, Appel and Corneille – visited 1949, Malmö. Together with Österlin and Hultén they created lithography “Image Press”, in the Imaginists print shop. The edition consisted of 9 works, where-of one each was hand colored be Constant and Hultén.
In 1950 the Imaginists exhibited in Stockholm and Hultén also exhibited with the “Cobra” in Belgium, at the same time.
In the summer of 1951 Hultén made a round trip with his motorbike through Spain, it took him to Altamira to the cave paintings. He visited 8 caves and ended the unforgettable journey in Lascaux, where he through a stroke of luck, came to study the paintings in the under ground halls, together with Jacques Marsal – one of the people who discovered the caves.
The Imaginists exhibited 1952 together with their visitors – Victor Brauner, Wifredo Lam, Zao Wou-Ki and Carl Henning Pedersen – in different Swedish museums, among others in Malmö – Museum and the Art hall in Göteborg. Hultén went to Yugoslavia.
In 1953 the Imaginists made presentations in Paris and Florence. In the Image-edition, the first Swedish copy of Arthur Rimbaud’s  “Une saison en enfer” (A season in Hell) came out graphically formed and with color lithography’s and drawings by CO Hultén.
In 1954 plans for an Avant-Garde Galerie began to take form. A trip with the motorbike through Yugoslavia was extended into Turkey. Radimjlagrabfeld in Croatia, which had the strange stone monuments Bogumilen, impressed Hultén.
The Galerie “Colibri” was opened in January 1955, with an International exhibition holding artists from ten different countries. Hultén participated in the exhibitions “Premiére confrontation d’art experimental” and “Paroles visibles”, both in Paris – and at the exhibition “Phases” in Mexico City. He seized the initiative and founded the “Salamander”, a magazine for art and poetry; he was part of the editorial team together with K.G.Götz and E.Jaguer. The leading article of the first edition was dedicated to Marcel Duchamps.
In 1955 he took part in The Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture.
Hultén was 1956 part of an International Traveling exhibition in Japan. He started to work with enamel. During the following years and up into the 60-s he exhibited in Museums and Galleries in Sweden and Copenhagen. He worked with “Skandinavisk konst” (Scandinavian art) in Lima, Peru. He was invited to “Internationalen Malerei 1961”, in Wolframs-Eschenbach in West Germany.
He made a film about The House of The Mailman Cheval: “Palais Ideal” in 1962. He participated in Brussels, at “Cobra et après” (Cobra and after) and at the traveling exhibition “12 Swedish Painters”, in the USA. Together with the author and “Cobra”- artist Christian Dotremont, Hultén produced the Zyklus “Dessin mots”, this received the “Graphica” award.
1963 he began a large Sculpture project in a recently built area in Malmö. After a fire brigade rehearsal, where an old shed next to Hultén’s summerhouse was set afire, only charcoaled logs and broad planks were left over, this inspired him to make a number of large format Material Collages. Other materials, like Mirror, Copper sheets, Styrofoam and old Shoes, by and by came into use. The work on the first Collage coincided with the devastating racial uproars in San Francisco. The Collage got the name “Mansa Kan Kan Moussa berättar om armadan” (Mansa Kan Kan tells about the Armada), in order to contribute with a provocative piece to the racial tolerance. KanKan Moussa was Ruler over the enormous African Kingdom, Mali during the years 1307 to 1332, and his predecessor had sent an Armada out from the coast of Senegal, in order to explore the other side of the Ocean. Later calculations do not rule out that somebody might have landed on the other side. This took place more than a hundred years before Columbus, and so it could be, if put to the point, that the first to arrive in the New World could have been the Africans.
All collages got names that reached back into the history or mythology of the Africans, an unconscious foreplay to later paintings with African themes.
Hultén stopped for several years doing easel-paintings and worked instead with Enamel and Graphic. He participated in several large exhibitions, as for example, the Swedish-International “Les Merveilleux Moderne” in 1965 and the much talked about “Erotic Art”, in the art hall in Lund, 1968 and there, the same year the first Retrospective, that covered a span of 30 years. This presentation was also shown in Göteborg and Stockholm. He creates a 64 square meter large Enamel work for a building in Stockholm. He traveled for the first time to Africa, drove in the year 1969 through Gambia and Senegal.
The following year the preparations started for yet another and this time more extensive trip to Africa. A VW-van suited for the tropics was picked up in Germany, then Hultén had it fitted in Sweden to suite his personal needs. The journey took place during the winter of 1970/71, accompanying him was his wife, the sculpture Birgitta Stenberg. Leaving by ship from Marseilles to Dakar, the journey took them through 10 countries and back home through the Sahara. “Skissernas museum (The Sketches museum) in Lund, is one of the few very special museums in the World, it collects only sketches, cardboard-works and models of public monumental art. They gave Hultén the assignment, to collect suitable exhibits from the different places, in order to create a special Africa-section.
However, he did not only search for relics from ancient traditional African art, he also applied great effort trying to document contemporary African art.
Apart from all else, he was also given the official mandate to scout out the possibility of having a Swedish art exhibition happen in Africa.  In West Africa the “Musée Dynamique” in Dakar offered the possibility, to make a big exhibition in 1972, this event was enlarged with a Film festival and the presentation of Swedish literature in French translation. It was all taking place under the auspices of the Senegalese Poet and President Leopold Sedar Senghor.
CO Hultén was given the large Working-Scholar-Ship by the Swedish state.
Yet another long journey took him through Africa in the winter of 1973/74. Hultén now intensified his search for contemporary art as well as the traditional art. The collection at The Sketches museum was in this way enlarged. There was a break-in in Hultén’s van and it was not only the camera equipment that was taken, more heartbreaking was the loss of all the written documents – notes, diaries and interviews.
The “Cobra” group arranged a Retrospective exhibition in Brussels in 1974, where Hultén’s works were shown.
A book about the Contemporary art in Africa “Modern konst i Afrika” (Modern art in Africa), was published in 1979 through Kaleidoskop-publishing in Lund, edited by CO Hultén, who also contributed considerably as well as making some portraits of artists. “Liljevalchs Konsthall”, (Liljevalchs Art Hall) Sweden’s Art Hall in Stockholm, displayed in1978, in their large rooms a comprehensive Retrospective exhibition showing 528 cataloged works. Four years later there was an exposition in the Art Hall of Hulténs hometown, Malmö.
In 1982 he participated in a “Cobra”- exhibition in “Musée d’Art Moderne” in Paris. In 1983 Artur Lundkvist had a book of CO Hultén’s works published, the title was “Fågelsyner och Urskogshot” (Birdvision and Primeval Forest Dangers), it was edited in part through conversations between the author and the artist.
Throughout the eighties and the nineties only a few gallery exhibitions took place with CO Hulténs works. Instead he only exhibited new works in Sweden and Denmark.
In 1986 he partook in the “Cobra”-Presentation, first in Caracas and later in 1987 in “Taipe National Fine Arts Museum”, Taiwan. The following year was the Jubilee-exhibition in Amsterdam: “Cobra 40 years after”, then came the exhibition “Decembristerne”, in Copenhagen and last 1990 in “Centro Cultural”, in Malaga.
He participated in 1991 in the “Hommage á Matta”, Grand Palais, Paris, and at the opening of the new “Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst”, in Amsterdam, Holland. Here Hultén was showing several works just like he did in the same year, at the “Cobra”-exhibit in the Kunstverein Bentheim (Art Association Bentheim), in Germany.
For his eighties birthday in 1996, a Hommage with text about CO Hultén’s works and many pictures was published. This book was collaboration between the authors, art historians, poets and painting-friends. It came out under the title “ Jorden är ett rum” (The earth is a room), and it took its bearings from one of the artist’s paintings from the sixties. For the same occasion the Kunstmuseum in Göteborg and the Museum in Umeå exhibited an overview of his production over the past 10 years.
Another presentation took place in 1997, in connection with the jubilee of the Uttersberger Museumsgalerie Astley. Under the title “Magins hjärta” (The Magic of the Heart), CO Hultén’s collection of African art was displayed for the first time publicly, together with some of his new paintings. This event spurred so much attention, that the foundation was established for a television documentary about CO Hultén and his life’s work.
During the winter he not only had the opportunity to explore the African animal kingdom, in Tanzania but also to explore the feeling and visit the Olduvai Gorge, the very bottom of the “cradle of mankind”. CO Hultén then set out for Zanzibar, an island that in earlier days was very much alive and famous for its horrendous slave trade and was the jumping board, for the white man to encroach the heart of Africa: A still enthralling and mysterious island, with its labyrinth like city, in part build on corral-stems.
 There was in 1999 an exhibition at “Galerie in C”, in Cologne.
In the following year Hultén exhibited together with “Cobra”, in Buenos Aires and in Sao Paulo.
In 2001 the preparations were initiated, for a Traveling Exhibition to several German cities.

Solo exhibitions after 2001:
2003 Galerie Bel’Art, Stockholm, ”Abstract works from the 1940’s”
2003 Galerie Bel’Art, Stockholm, ”Söta Fröken Pilsk and other collages from the 1940’s”
2004 Växjö Konsthall, ”Paintings”
2004 Skövde Konstmuseum, ”Söta Fröken Pilsk”
2005 Galerie Bel’Art, Stockholm, ”New Paintings”
2006 Borstahusens Konsthall, ”Paintings”
2006 Ystads Konstmuseum, ”New Paintings and experimental works from the 1940’s”
2006 Galerie Bel’Art, Stockholm, ”Selected works from nine decades”
2006 Staffanstorps Konsthall, ”Paintings”
2008 Galerie Bel'Art, Stockholm, ¨Paintings 1944 - 1955

Group exhibitions after 2001:
2005 Galerie Bel’Art, Stockholm, ”30 years anniversary – Galerie Bel’Art”
2007 Teckningsmuseet, Laholm,” Linje Lust - Svenska Teckningar under 100 år”
2008 Konstmässan, Sollentuna, with Galerie Bel'Art

Awards:
2005 Prins Eugen Medal.
2005 City of Malmö – City Award

Represented:
Malmö Museum
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Göteborgs Konstmuseum
COBRA-Museet, Amstelveen, Holland
Skövde Museum
Växjö Museum
Norrköpings Konstmuseum
Linköpings Museum
Kristianstads Museum
Ystads Museum
Trelleborgs Museum
Helsingborgs Museum
Uppsala Konstmuseum
British Museum, London
Rasjö-collection, Vida Museum, Öland
Silkeborgs Kunstmuseum, Denmark
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela
Collection Karel van Stuivenberg, Caracas, Venezuela
And in numerous private collections in Sweden and abroad.