Artwork: Ornament

Carl Magnus is a painter, graphic artist and sculptor. He initially painted expressive and powerful paintings and was influenced by Renaissance architecture while living in Tuscany. At the end of the 1960s, his forms changed towards more stylised expressions, and after seeing Lucas Cranach’s (the elder) painting ‘The Fountain of Youth’, his choice of colours and motifs changed radically.

Nowadays, his art is based on simple geometric or architectural motifs, such as the staircase, pyramid and obelisk. For a while he lived in Drakabygget (an artists’ collective) with Jörgen Nash, where his colleagues nicknamed him Trapp-Calle (Staircase Calle).

The artwork ‘Ornament’, which hangs on the façade of Finnveden Upper Secondary School (the L house), is made of copper. Its shape echoes forms he has been working on for several years. This ‘symbol’ is an Egyptian hieroglyph that means water. He has also been inspired by the alderman’s wreath, which in the past was stamped into silver objects. Something that was important for Carl Magnus was the creation of movement, and you can clearly see the movement of the water in the mould. Purchased by the Municipality of Värnamo in 2006.