#stringberg

In the years ranging from 1892 to 1894, a period of intense pictorial activity spent between Berlin, Dornach and Paris, Strindberg also developed a theory of art related to his painting that prefigured both the surrealism and abstract expressionism of the twentieth century, of which his central text remains Of Chance in Artistic Production. When planning a picture, Strindberg gave way to chance. The canvas becomes a place of surprise and unexpected encounters such as in The Country of Marvels painted in 1894 in Dornach, where the forest landscape by the sea turns into a subterranean grotto. 

Source : Musée d’Orsay / Exhibition [August Strindberg (1849-1912). Painter and Photographer] held in 2001

Few outside of Sweden know that the playwright August Strindberg had periods of intense engagement with painting and photography in the 1890s, when his literary creativity had reached a deadlock. In an essay from 1894 called “Chance in Artistic Creation,” he describes the methods that he employs, speaking about his wish to “imitate […] nature’s way of creating.” [Strindberg’s text was written in French and printed in the Paris journal Revue des Revues under the title “Du hasard dans la production artistique.”] This text is strangely prophetic, foreboding the automatic techniques of the twentieth century. His method is to start more or less at random, trusting nature’s inherent desire for form (what he calls “matter’s drive towards representation”) to eventually make the picture develop out of the paint, almost by itself.