Lucia Trade and Innovation Award 2025
My warmest congratulations to Spotify, recipients of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerces ”Lucia Trade and Innovation Award” 2025.
When I received the commission to paint the award diploma for the SACCNY’s ”Lucia Trade and Innovation Award,” I was reminded of Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s summer talk on Swedish P1 radio. He spoke about the role that his music teacher Tony and Ricky at the youth center in Rågsved centrum had played in his life as a teenager. Passionate souls who took his interest in music and computers seriously. They taught him important life skills like playing the accordion and let him install computers and internet connections at the youth center.
Rågsved, a working class suburb in Stockholm, is of course also historic ground from a musical perspective. I was 14 the first time I heard the Rågsved band Ebba Grön. I sang in the school choir and for some reason, someone had decided that ”Staten och kapitalet” (look it up on Spotify if you havn’t heard it) should be part of our repertoire. How it turned out? Let’s just say the genre choral punk never really took off.
I grew up in a small, rural town in the north of Sweden. A place that has relatively little in common with Rågsved, on the surface, but there are also similarities. They are places that don’t exactly brim with resources and status. Sometimes they are spoken ill of, often underestimated and viewed with prejudiced eyes. But art, culture, and innovation often emerge from unexpected environments, as long as the conditions are provided.
So congratulations to Spotify, and thanks to all the Tonys and Rickys and others out there who help young people develop their creativity. You are invaluable.
Nobel Prize Diplomas
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022
When you are awarded a Nobel Prize you recieve a prize sum, a gold medal, and a diploma decorated with a piece of original art. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences assigns the artists, and this year I had the great honour of painting the artwork for the diplomas for the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry 2022 are K. Barry Sharpeless, Carolyn R. Bertozzi and Morten Meldal – “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”. Click chemistry is a flexible and effective way of connecting molecules, and when I was assigned to make the artwork for the diplomas for the laureates, I wanted to somehow reflect that idea. So I made a triptych, with a Swedish forest scenery, that works in an unusual way.
A triptych is one artwork, divided into three parts. Usually those three parts can only be put together in one specific order. If you assemble the triptych in any other way, the image will not work. The Nobel Prize diplomas-triptych is different, in that it can be assembled in any order and still function as an image – just as if it would have been “clicked” together.
Artist: Elisabeth Biström | Calligrapher: Marianne Pettersson Soold | Book binder: Leonard Gustafssons Bokbinderi AB | Photo: Lovisa Engblom | © The Nobel Foundation 2022
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2023
The Nobel Prize Laureates in Physics 2023, Anne L’Huillier, Ferenc Krausz and Pierre Agostini, recieved their Nobel Prize “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”.
I wanted to reflect their research in my choice of motifs for the diplomas and thus chose to paint landscapes with glimmers of light dancing on water.
Artist: Elisabeth Biström | Calligrapher: Marie A. Györi | Book binder: Leonard Gustafssons Bokbinderi AB | Photo: Dan Lepp | © The Nobel Foundation 2023
The Economy Prize 2024
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences went to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson ”for studies of how institutions are formed and influence prosperity.” For their diplomas, I wanted to visualize the connection between economic development and what the laureates call inclusive institutions.
Their research shows that some countries are rich while others remain poor due to how European colonial powers built different types of institutions. Where colonizers settled permanently, they created inclusive institutions that fostered prosperity—as in the USA and Canada. Where they merely extracted resources, as in parts of southern Africa, they built extractive institutions that created lasting poverty and inequality.
I found my motifs around Stockholm City Hall—a symbol of both local democracy and the Nobel festivities. But instead of depicting its beautiful exterior, I made it the backdrop and focused on construction sites around the city: economic development in its most concrete form. I call the paintings, using concepts from the laureates’ research: ”Prosperity,” ”Progress,” and ”Power.”
Artist: Elisabeth Biström | Calligrapher: Marie A. Györi | Book binder: Leonard Gustafssons Bokbinderi AB | Photo: Dan Lepp | © The Nobel Foundation 2024
Seascapes from the Bothnian Bay
I grew up close to the coast of Västerbotten, in the north of Sweden. The stony shoreline of the Bothnian Bay is a never ending source of inspiration for my painting. I find that I can paint the same rocks and waves over and over and never see the same view twice.
The Reconstruction of Slussen
In 2020 I started documenting the reconstruction of an area in Stockholm, called Slussen. What began as a side project during the pandemic has evolved into a major body of work exploring the construction sites and the people that build our cities and societies.
In fall 2026, this work will be exhibited at Karby Gård in Täby, Stockholm. The exhibition will showcase how I’ve captured the evolving landscape of Slussen through watercolor—a medium not typically associated with concrete, steel, and construction machinery. I find the contrast between the rough materiality of the scenes and the delicacy of the watercolor medium fascinating and enticing.
The project represents my interest in depicting scenes that rarely find their way into traditional art spaces, finding interest in places where you usually wouldn’t see topics for art.
Contact
Wish to get in touch with me regarding my art? Welcome to contact me at info@elisabethbistrom.com.