Welcome to the opening of Cycles of Unease: Rudolf Gowenius and Andjeas Pestov Ejiksson at Piteå museum

From Öjebyn to Paris, from church murals and jazz bars to Ivar Kreuger’s private apartment, Rudolf Gowenius (1896–1960) moved through a period of profound change. His practice encompassed a wide range of techniques and settings—including the development of a method for painting on velvet—and connects vastly different environments, people, and social worlds.

In the spring of 1932, Gowenius completed a large velvet painting for Ivar Kreuger’s music room in Paris. As the work was about to be delivered, Kreuger was found dead. The painting later disappeared and is known today only through a photograph and a small preparatory study.

Cycles of Unease brings together paintings, sketches, prints, photographs, and other archival material from Gowenius’s life and work. The exhibition centers on a period in which uncertainty existed side by side watch and faith in the future—and on the ways major historical events enter into individual lives. It also presents a new audiovisual installation by Andjeas Pestov Ejiksson, created in collaboration with composer Andreas Westerdahl and based on the lost painting made for Kreuger.

The exhibition is curated by Andjeas Pestov Ejiksson, developed in dialogue with Vera Gowenius, and produced by Kin Museum of Contemporary Art.

Opening program: 18:00–20:00:

•	Piteå museum and Bettina Persson, Deputy Museum Director at Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, gives the opening welcome.
•	Andjeas Pestov Ejiksson introduces the exhibition.
•	Conversation between Vera Gowenius and Andjeas Pestov Ejiksson about Rudolf Gowenius’s art and life.

Image 1: One of four murals painted by Rudolf Gowenius in a chapel in Mignaloux-Beauvoir, France, 1935.
Image 2: Maya Gowenius in front of a painting at the studio in Montmartre, Paris, sometime in the early 1930s. Photographer unknown.
Image 3: Interior with mural painting at the La Cigogne nightclub, Montparnasse, Paris, 1931. Photographer unknown.