Provenance:

Private Collection, Sweden

Description:

Bergström’s early career began in Värmland, Dalarna and Bohuslän in 1902 to 1904, then in Paris between 1904 and 1905 and then Italy in 1906 until 1907. Subsequently he was a central figure to the Scandinavian artistic community ranging from Chairman of the Swedish Graphic Society from 1913 to 1918 to being a board member of the Karlstad Museum in 1917. His many official capacities did not stop him from being a fairly prolific painter and pioneering woodcut artist, as well as a caricaturist in his early career. His artistic output consists mostly of studies of his local landscape around Värmland and Bohuslän, as well as portraiture of local figures both in oil and woodcut. His approach to woodcuts earned him many plaudits, in ‘Scandinavian Art’ by Carl Laurin et al they record that he ‘has reawakened interest in the artistic possibilities of the woodcut,…’[1]

Bergström was married in 1906 to Elsa Maria Eklind who was the daughter of a cellar master.

[1] ‘Scandinavian Art’. Carl Laurin et al, New York, 1922, Vol 5, p.204