Georg Lagerstedt - Art as Oxygen

This was before the age of television sets. And long, long before digital technology and the internet. Perhaps the occasional crackling radio competed for attention, but this was the era of the printed press. If something happened in the world, you read about it in the newspaper. These column inches were illustrated by skilled draftsmen. The most skilled of all was Georg Lagerstedt. Of him, the art historian Gustaf Näsström wrote in 1952:
“In the history of the Swedish press, Lagerstedt will always retain his standing as one of the foremost newspaper illustrators of our day, a refined artist with a quite exceptional ability to characterize figures in motion and to capture the scent of different settings.”
But Georg Lagerstedt was a painter too. And it is as a visual artist that we meet him at Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5. He received his training at the Slöjdföreningen school and then at Valand School of Painting before setting out into the world. Copenhagen, Paris, Spain, and Morocco. There are traces of these adventures here.
In the work “The Eiffel Tower from the First Observation Platform,” he takes us to the capital of art. Right in the middle of it, one might say. Another work shows street musicians in Soho. And then we sit down among the palms in “Plaza Cataluña, Barcelona.” Lagerstedt became particularly noted for his ability to depict the human body in motion, usually in sporting contexts. A sample of that can be found in the duel between the Hungarian fencers Endre Kabos and Lazlo Rajcsanyi.
A warm welcome to discover Georg Lagerstedt!