ArtistSwedish
Maria Ronnehed
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Maria Ronnehed builds her paintings layer by layer, beginning with paper, then adhering a fine silk paper made from banana fiber, and painting over it with textile colors that must dry fully between each application. Sometimes gold leaf enters the surface too. The result is work that holds light differently from conventional painting - the colors vibrate rather than sit still, and the texture shifts depending on where you stand.
Ronnehed was born in 1956 in Warsaw, Poland, and eventually settled in Åhus on Sweden's south coast. Her path to painting was not direct. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Design at the University of Wales in Cardiff, she channeled her sense of color into design work, running her own studio producing patterns for wallpapers and textiles. She exhibited at textile fairs in Germany and Belgium and showed work across Britain before pivoting fully toward fine art.
The turn came around 2003 when she began selling paintings through Galleri Kråkeslätt in Bromölla. The response was strong enough that she was able to leave design work behind and focus entirely on her canvases. She has since shown through Galleri Scandinavia and other venues across Sweden, and her work has entered private collections and corporate acquisitions, including bank collections. Her paintings tend to work best in spaces with clean lines and restrained surfaces - the art needs room to assert itself.
Ronnehed's approach to abstraction is not conceptually driven so much as sensory. She is primarily concerned with what color does to a viewer - how a particular combination can feel warm or disquieting, how layering shifts what initially looks like a flat surface into something with interior depth. The techniques she uses, particularly the banana-fiber paper and textile dyes, give her work a material quality that separates it from more familiar acrylic or oil abstractions.
At auction, Ronnehed's work circulates primarily through Gothenburg-based houses, with Stockholms Auktionsverk Göteborg and Göteborgs Auktionsverk accounting for most of the 13 recorded lots. Prices for her mixed-media works on paper have reached 4,400 SEK, with several lots selling in the 2,000-3,600 SEK range. The works described in auction records as 'blandteknik pa papp' - mixed media on card - represent the compact, signed pieces she has produced consistently throughout her career.