Page 37 - recent works

whatever was available after queuing for several hours”, she reminisces.
The shortages also applied to artists’ materials. There was a lack of paper, of
white paper. But she soon discovered that good quality rag paper was available
in shops that had things to sell. It was used for wrapping purchases. Oil paints
could sometimes be bought in other towns. When the rumour spread that
yellow paint was available somewhere, four or five students would share a car
and travel there. “At the academy they made their own paints which were only
available to the students. The quality was fantastic.”
The first time that she entered the school and took the stairs up to the
painting room she saw that everything had a blackish brown patina and she
wondered why. The answer was that this was dust from years of drawing
with charcoal. The students painted every morning and drew from a model
in the afternoons.
Ann had arrived at the school with Cézanne as her idol but after a
number of weeks her professor remarked in English: “You are not Cézanne.”
There was much to stimulate reflection on what makes an artist.
The models were pensioned prostitutes, women and men, who were
happy to have an income. Another world. Everything was different and
unexpected.
Visiting the Hotel Europejski and eating the delicious fried eggs was a
huge contrast; as was drinking poire liqueur at the Kawiarnia Telimena. Sitting
in the Telimena drinking coffee, when there was some, and writing became
one of her favourite activities.
She opens her diary and shows me a note from November 1986:
“I understand Polish art better, I understand the language that it uses,
that it is strong as though cut in stone, a strength that comes from a careful
crafting.”
Underlined she has written “To work is important.”
Ann Frössén had 110 drawings and paintings with her on the plane
home. In February 1987 she noted in her diary: “Warsaw was bewildering, but I
have never felt so happy.”

“I come here every day, it is like a refuge for me”, Ann Frössén remarks. The
first thing I notice when I visit her spacious studio on Luntmakargatan in
Stockholm is a discrete little sign with the legend “Frössén is at large.” But
what is most striking are the monumental canvases with their cascades of
water. The largest of the paintings almost makes me feel dizzy; suddenly I
am back on the rolling ferries that crossed the Baltic during my childhood.

MICHAEL WINIARSKI

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