MADRID.- After several years of research and work, and thanks to the collaboration of Fundación Mapfre, the Reina Sofía Museum has completed the complex process of restoring Sylvie, an emblematic work by Öyvind Fahlström (São Paulo, 1928-Stockholm, 1976). This work comprises a set consisting of two wooden and metal plates lined with paper and fabric painted with tempera, vinyl and different magnetized elements, some of which had disappeared.

Fahlström - a creator hardly classifiable within the history of art - developed a particular conceptual method for both the artist and the viewer to participate in an operation of construction and deconstruction of the work. The variable paintings were one of the distinctive creations of Fahlström's oeuvre, with independent elements with magnets so that they could be organized by the public in varied compositions.  

Technical challenge

In Sylvie's case, nine pieces were missing, including the main piece of the work, which have been recrafted by the Museum's Restoration Department. Although there was scarce information and not very precise documentation, the close collaboration of the Öyvind Fahlström Foundation in the figure of its director, Sharon Avery-Fahlström (widow and assistant in the last years of the artist's life) has been decisive in successfully facing the real technical challenge of restoring this work. It was her who located a color slide that has served as the basis for the entire project. From it, images of the work were digitized in order to enlarge to real size the elements to be reproduced.

Öyvind Fahlström (São Paulo, 1928 - Stockholm, 1976) is an artist who has often been defined as a precursor of European pop art. Although in many of his works he has resorted to pop imagery and has paid attention to the creative possibilities of the new mass media and underground culture, his work is characterized by a high degree of conceptual complexity and by being articulated from his deepest moral and political convictions. The Museo Reina Sofia’s Collection includes several of his works, such as Marcha de Mao-Hope (1966), Curva de la vida n.º I, Ian Fleming (1967) or Me siento como si hubiera inventado la guerra (1976), among others.