Below you will find a catalogue including all the icons that
are exposed in this gallery arranged into different groups.
In peace and quiet you may botanize amongst a selection
of nearly 50 icon-motifs painted by Lars Gerdmar and
through short commentaries and close-ups make acquain-
tance with the messages of the different motifs.
If nothing else is said Gerdmar has written the texts
and the same applies for the photographs, which are
taken by Bo Wiberg, who specializes in art and antiquities
and who since many years collaborates with Gerdmar.
Besides the photos and texts you will later on also find
hymn quotations and prayers from the Orthodox Church
calendar, dedicated to the different events and persons
that are depicted in the icons, here. Later on we also
present some poems by Ingemar Leckius. Leckius is
one of the leading poets in Sweden and here you may l
ater on find some poems selected from his collection
Vid Terebinträdet, in its English version: Light from Light,
2001.
By clicking the headings and the titles below you
will enter into the different motifs. In the Swedish version
you find several longer commentaries to the motifs. A few
of these will also be published here later on. Man is the
self-portrait of God, the Trinity, and the painted icon is
the image of God’s birth as a human person – the mystery
of the Incarnation (Latin: in carne, in the flesh). The icon
is without doubt a beautiful piece of art, belonging to one
of the oldest and foremost pictorial cultures throughout
history. But it is also a kind of spiritual mirror, a dialogue-
image, where man is invited to a face-to-face conver-
sation with God himself, his heavenly and spiritual father,
who has become a close friend to him and his beloved.
Saint Athanasios, patriarch of Alexandria in the 4th century
and recognized as one of the first theologians of the
incarnation, says apropos this mystery: God became man,
so that man should become divinizised – words to be medi-
tated on at the meeting with the icons. And the 5th century
Saint Augustine of Hippo says on account of the same
mystery and the union of God and man: God is closer to
man than man himself.
With these words we wish you welcomed on a tour in
the IMAGO NOVA GALLERY.
