Carl Fredrik Reutersward (1934-2016)

Swedish modern artist Carl Fredrik Reutersward has died at the age of 81, Daniel E. Slotnik of the New York Times reports.

Born in Stockholm in 1934, Reutersward studied art in Paris with the painter Fernand Léger and at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art. Director of Stockholm's Moderna Museet, Daniel Birnbaum, said Reutersward played a key role in establishing modern art in Sweden.

The artist, who was friends with the Beatles’s John Lennon, was inspired to create his iconic sculpture of a knotted Colt revolver after Lennon was killed by Mark David Chapman in 1980. Titled Non Violence, the work became an international symbol for peace. Reutersward originally placed the sculpture in Strawberry Fields in Central Park. Today replicas of the work can be found in more than thirty cities around the world including a version of the sculpture that stands outside the headquarters of the United Nations in New York.