ROLAND SVENSSON (1910-2003). "Bidevind", signed and dated 1979, colour lithograph.

Frame dimensions approx. 46.5 x 56.5 cm.
Image dimensions approx. 35 x 43 cm.

About Roland Svensson (1910-2003)
The painter, graphic artist, illustrator, cultural historian, geographer and author Roland Svensson has enriched our view of the archipelago, and no one has succeeded in depicting the entire archipelago environment with boats, wildlife and people in the same way as him.

Born and raised in Stockholm, Roland Svensson sought his way out to the archipelago early on, which he tried to experience and interpret from the perspective of the archipelago people. He saw it as his calling to document the sea country in words and pictures before it disappeared. As a landscape painter, Karl Nordström was his master, Axel Sjöberg his role model in his interpretation of nature, and Bruno Liljefors his model as an archipelago portrayer.

During his studies at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1930s, Roland Svensson's interest in graphic art grew. At the School of Graphic Art, 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 he received the honorary doctorate in philosophy in connection with Stockholm University's 100th anniversary in 1978, the citation read: "The artist Roland Svensson has established a recognized position as a painter, primarily with motifs from the Stockholm archipelago, but subsequently also with a field of activity extended to other coasts and oceans. Alongside his long-recognized position as an artist, Svensson has increasingly come to depict various marine environments in writing in a prominent way. His production includes several accounts based on many years of research from the Stockholm archipelago but also from a number of island communities, where people's living conditions are predominantly dominated by the marine environment, such as Tristan da Cunha".