ArtistSwedish
Åke Rolfstadius
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Åke Rolfstadius was born on 30 May 1918 in Lunda, Södermanland, under the name Rundquist. He began his artistic life not with a brush but with clay, establishing Haga Art Pottery (Haga konstkeram) in Solna in the early part of his career - a ceramics workshop that gave him a practical grounding in materials and form before he moved on to the wider world of painting, sculpture and monumental work.
His formal training took him far beyond Sweden. He studied at Grünewald's painting school in Stockholm, then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris - one of the most open and internationally mixed ateliers in the city, frequented by artists from across Europe and the Americas. He later undertook dedicated mosaic studies under Professor Giuseppe Bovini in Italy, a specialist in early Christian and Byzantine mosaic, and at Château Raffilly in France. These layers of training gave him an unusually broad technical range.
Rolfstadius became best known for large-scale public commissions. His monumental works in Italian glass mosaic, incorporating gold and silver tiles, decorated the foyer of Cloetta in Stockholm. He created a triptych for Stensele Chapel in Norrland, altar paintings for various churches, and decorations for Swedish embassies. Together with his wife he produced a crucifix for Gustaf Vasa Church in Stockholm. His relief panel 'Hamn' (Harbour) was installed at Karolinska University Hospital, a work designed for daily encounter rather than gallery display.
As a painter he worked primarily in oil on panel and canvas, returning repeatedly to landscapes from the Mediterranean coast and from South America - places he visited and absorbed over many years. Titles in his auction record include 'Från Frankrike', 'Från Italien', 'Afton vid havet', and 'Afton Lappland', suggesting a painter equally drawn to northern Swedish light and southern warmth. His sculptural work, including copper wall reliefs, extended the material sensibility he had built through ceramics.
The breadth of institutional recognition is significant. Rolfstadius's work entered the collections of King Gustaf VI Adolf and King Carl XVI Gustaf, as well as international museums including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He is also represented at Borgå museum in Finland and in numerous Swedish regional collections. He died on 11 February 1992 in Stockholm.
On the auction market, Rolfstadius appears primarily through Norrlands Auktionsverk, which has handled six of the eleven items in the Auctionist database. The range includes both oil paintings and copper wall sculptures (reliefs). Only one item has a recorded sale price, 300 SEK for 'Det röda Trädet' (The Red Tree). The low price activity is consistent with an artist whose primary legacy is in permanent public and institutional collections rather than the secondary market.