The Gospel According To Archer St. John
Logic dictated that if he was exhibiting at the Norwegian Art and Craft Club, he was most likely… Norwegian. For the next year and a half, I checked with any art source I thought might have a lead on this (apparently) Norwegian abstract artist. One dead end after another, as too many of my Googled searches led to indecipherable Scandinavian sites with nary a William Ekgren.
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They Had Faces Then Photo of William Ekgren—and the drawing he apparently did in 1953 for a comic book cover, which was never published. With thanks to Eric and Karl R. Larsen. [©2008 the respective copyright holders.]
Eventually, however, perseverance paid off. On July 6, 1918, William Ekgren was born in Oslo, Norway. Although his mother was Norwegian, his father was Swedish, and they moved to Sweden when William was two years old. He attended school there until he was 15, at which time he became an itinerant artist, studying and exhibiting in South America as well as Europe. Eventually, Ekgren made his way to the US, where he became an art instructor. Two sources provided the majority of the biographical details. First, the Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, which not only supplied much of the background information, but also houses 11 pieces of Ekgren artwork in its collection. The head archivist was kind enough to provide me with copies of the 11 works from their catalog. Even though the small size of the photographs makes it difficult to see details within the artwork, the frenzied style of his work comes through. (See next page.) A painting thought to be a depiction of the Titanic sinking (1949) is described in the catalog’s notes as: “reds, oranges and yellows, descending into blue and grey water… [the] entire piece is of deep watercolor patches delineated by black painted outlines.” This description could be applied almost verbatim to the cover of Strange Terrors #4. Of another oil titled The Grotto at Rainbow’s End (1958), it’s noted that the “entire canvas is overlaid with close, black concentric circles,” yet another form of patterning that recalls his comic covers. Ekgren’s work has a somber quality, with isolated figures and dreamlike landscapes. It’s not a huge stretch to assume that Ekgren was influenced by the work of his legendary countryman Edvard Munch, painter of the iconic The Scream. Munch passed away in 1944 and was a pioneer in the Expressionistic style that Ekgren obviously embraced. My second source was the Norwegian American Historical Association (NAHA), which provided even more detail about Ekgren’s career. Within their archives were Art Journal entries for the years 1950-52, which revealed that Ekgren worked at the Norheim Studio at 6007 18th Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. A brief summary of his career notes the various galleries at which he had presented work, and that he was “a constant exhibitor at the Greenwich Village Outdoor Art Exhibition.” Nestled next to his write-up was a photograph of the artist, with a jaunty bowtie and pencil-thin mustache, looking vaguely like Vincent Price. Included in the NAHA archives were several postcards in Ekgren’s handwriting to friends in the United States. In one, dated Dec. 6, 1983, he thanks a friend for forwarding him a copy of the Vesterheim catalog containing his paintings. An intriguing postscript informs his friend that a book of his poetry was being published by Vantage Press “around New Year.” Indeed, it was. In 1984, Vantage Press released a book of Ekgren’s “whirling, almost psychedelic poetry.” No surprise, I suppose, given his
artwork. The press release for the book Out of Six Attitudes goes on to breathlessly credit him with “virtually reinventing language.” Without comment, here is an excerpt from one of his poems: As long as a clear ex-gladness of precise anti-self-madness derived from the lineage twin-string, is powerfully directing our course with obstructing sadness, and subsight range, with worse badness, moral-viewed, nothing seems worth issuing.
Esoteric poetry aside, one interesting piece of information also appearing in this press release is that Ekgren returned to Sweden in 1959, where he married and fathered two boys. Nothing, though, about his comic book work. How did this Scandinavian Expressionist painter come to draw comic books covers? Serendipity is finding something unexpected. Sometimes, though, something unexpected finds you. Over the years, I’ve littered several online discussion groups with e-mail posts casting about for any William Ekgren information. One day an e-mail appeared in my In Box with the promising subject line, “Ekgren original.” It came from an Eric Larsen, and his words floored me: “I have an original William Ekgren color drawing that he did in 1953 as a design for a comic book cover. I also know some biographical infor-