Roger Risberg

Roger Risberg was born in Gothenburg and studied at Konstfack in Stockholm from 1979 to 1984. Among his teachers was the satirical cartoonist Lars Hillersberg, who likened Risberg’s art to that of the American artist Keith Haring. Risberg’s work is primitive, clear-sighted, and known for its powerful interpretations of both people and animals.

He achieved his major breakthrough with a series of solo exhibitions in the late 1980s. Risberg is represented, among others, at the Nationalmuseum, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Bonniers Konsthall, and Moderna Museet. Roger Risberg passed away in 2011, at only 55 years of age, after a long illness.

"In the early 1980s, when De Unga Vilda was on the scene, Roger Risberg emerged. He proved to be the only one in Sweden who could claim the epithet. His paintings were strong and direct, without theoretical restraint. From the beginning, he often depicted himself as various animals, for example, an eagle—alone, exposed. A recurring theme was love, togetherness, and abandonment."
— Thomas Millroth (Swedish art historian, critic, curator, and author), in his book on Roger Risberg, 2011

Roger Risberg was an absurdist and a berserker, one of the genuinely eccentric free spirits on the fringes of the Swedish art scene. A primitive force that, in clarity and confusion, seeks the child and the barbarian beneath our increasingly sophisticated polish. His paintings are like roughly hewn, gallows-humorist graffiti—a kind of magical or brutally clear sign of the alienation, loneliness, and vulnerability of our time.
— Folke Edwards (Swedish museum professional, art critic, and author, Norrsken 92, Gothenburg Art Hall, 1992)