ArtistSwedish
Åke Nilsson
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Hans Åke Nilsson was born on 28 September 1935 in Västra Skrävlinge parish in Malmö, and grew up to become one of the more distinctly expressive voices in post-war Swedish painting. At sixteen he began formal training at Slöjdföreningens skola in Gothenburg, where he studied from 1951 to 1954. He then enrolled at Valands målarskola, working under teachers Nemes, Simson, and Renqvist - a formative period that gave him both technical grounding and exposure to the expressive figurative tradition that would define his career.
His subject matter was consistently rooted in the human figure, portraiture, and landscape, handled with a colouristic intensity that carried emotional weight. From his Valand years onward, still life was also a persistent thread in his practice - everyday objects like balls of yarn, potatoes, or loose cloth entered the canvas not as neutral props but as bearers of narrative and feeling. Colour, for Nilsson, was the primary vehicle for what he described as content oscillating between hope and despair.
He debuted at Lilla Galleriet in Stockholm in 1960, and over the following decades built a body of work shown in roughly fifty solo exhibitions, including shows at Konstnärshuset and Galleri Prisma in Stockholm. In 1974 he was one of six artists who founded the group Sex aspekter, together with Bertil Berg, Bernt Jonasson, Roj Friberg, Gunnar Thorén, and Folke Lind. The group exhibited at Gothenburg Museum of Art, Turku, Stockholm, Aarhus, and Linköping, and undertook a touring exhibition with Riksutställningar between 1974 and 1975. The collaboration reflected a shared interest in figurative painting at a moment when Swedish art was navigating between political conceptualism and painterly tradition.
Over the years Nilsson moved through several residences - from Gothenburg to Östad in Lerums kommun in 1973, then to Hovs hallar, and eventually to Lund, where he died on 1 October 2021, three days after his eighty-sixth birthday. His last exhibition was held in 2006 at Galleri Aveny in Gothenburg. His work entered the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, among other Swedish institutions.
The 19 items attributed to Nilsson in the Auctionist database reflect a dual presence at auction: oil paintings of figures and portraits alongside a number of DUX furniture pieces, including the Roma sofa and Petit armchairs he designed in the 1960s and 1970s. Sales have come primarily through Göteborgs Auktionsverk, which accounts for seven of his auction items. Realised prices for paintings have reached 2,000 SEK for a figure composition in oil. His furniture designs - a less-discussed side of his practice - have also found buyers at comparable levels.