ArtistSwedish
Alf Olsson
1 active items
Alf Ragnvald Olsson was born on 8 December 1925 in Gärdslöv on the Söderslätt plain in Skane, and the flat agricultural landscape of that region became the visual bedrock of everything he made. He grew up on a farm that his father rented from the von Blixen Finecke family, and the sensation of horizon - of earth pressing against sky - runs as a structural constant through his work in painting, printmaking and enamel.
His training was long and deliberate. After Hermods correspondence courses in drawing and painting from 1944 to 1947, he studied at the Essem school in Malmö, then at Otte Sköld's painting school in Stockholm, then at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1950 to 1951, at the Académie Libre in Stockholm, and finally at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1952 to 1957. That formation gave him technical grounding across painting and printmaking traditions both Swedish and Danish.
His debut exhibition came in 1958 at Färg och Form in Stockholm. From 1957 to 1969 he ran a shared graphic workshop in Stockholm with Philip von Schantz, Kerstin Abram-Nilsson, Karl-Erik Häggblad and Lars Lindeberg. In 1964, together with eight colleagues from the Royal Academy - Gösta Gierow, Häggblad, Bengt Landin, Lars Lindeberg, Göran Nilsson, Philip von Schantz, Nils G. Stenqvist and Pär Gunnar Thelander - he co-founded the IX-gruppen, a collective of ten graphic artists whose shared aim was to broaden access to original prints through touring exhibitions and collaboration. The group was active until 2000 and showed across Scandinavia and beyond.
From 1969 until the early 2000s Olsson ran his own graphic workshop in Edsbro in Uppland. During the 1970s and 1980s he developed a parallel practice in enamel painting, working at the enamel workshop of the Gustavsbergs porcelain factory. Together with Bengt Berglund, Göran Nilsson and Nalle Werner, he participated in the touring exhibition "Four Swedish Enamel Artists" in the United States from 1976 to 1979, and showed enamel work at Liljevalchs Konsthall in Stockholm in 1979. He also participated in international graphic biennials in Lugano, Ljubljana, Krakow and Bradford.
His work is held by Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Gothenburg Art Museum, Malmö Art Museum, Kalmar Art Museum, the National Art Council and H.M. King Gustaf VI Adolf's collections in Sweden, and internationally at the New York Public Library, the Print Cabinet in Dresden, Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki and the National Gallery in Oslo.
On the Nordic auction market, Alf Olsson's 20 lots at Auctionist span oil paintings, lithographs and graphic series. Works appear at dispersed regional houses including Formstad Auktioner, Laholms Auktionskammare and Södermanlands Auktionsverk. Top results reach approximately 4,000 SEK, with prints such as "Röd sol" (numbered 24/250) and the four-part "Årstiderna" series featuring consistently. His auction footprint is modest relative to his institutional standing, which reflects his generation's print-focused practice: much of the work entered collections through the IX-gruppen's distribution model rather than the secondary market.