ROLAND SVENSSON (1910-2003): "Vaxholm's castle", signed and numbered roland S, 252/360, color lithograph.

image dimensions approx. 38x56 cm.
frame size 58x75 cm About Roland Svensson (1910-2003) The painter, graphic artist, draftsman, cultural historian, geographer and writer Roland Svensson has enriched our view of the archipelago and no one has succeeded in portraying the entire archipelago environment with boats, wildlife and people in the same way as him.

Stockholmer and son of the big city Roland Svensson sought out the archipelago early on, which he tried to experience and interpret from the perspective of the people of the archipelago. He saw it as his calling, to document the sea country in words and pictures, before it would disappear. As a landscape painter, Karl Nordström was his master, Axel Sjöberg exemplary in his interpretation of nature, and Bruno Liljefors as an archipelago painter.

During his studies at the Art Academy in the 1930s, Roland Svensson's interest in graphics grew. At the School of Graphic Arts, which was led by the artists Emil Johansson-Thor and Harald Sallberg, it was Sallberg who in 1936 made him choose lithography among the graphic techniques. Roland Svensson's voyages of discovery to Möja, Sandhamn and the archipelagos of Nassa, Kallskär and Gillöga as well as the North and South Atlantic inspired numerous works.

When, in connection with Stockholm University's 100-year anniversary in 1978, he was awarded an honorary doctor of philosophy, the justification was "The artist Roland Svensson has created a recognized position for himself as a painter, mainly with motifs from the Stockholm archipelago, but then also with fields of activity extended to other coasts and oceans. In addition to his long-recognized position as an artist, Svensson has increasingly come to portray different marine environments in a prominent way, also in writing. In his production, several depictions based on many years of research can be seen from the Stockholm archipelago but also from several island communities, where people's living conditions are predominantly dominated by the marine environment. e.g. Tristan da Cunha".