ArtistSwedish
Bengt Olson
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Born on 22 June 1930 in Kristinehamn, Värmland, Bengt Olson entered Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg in 1948 at the youngest age the school had ever accepted a student. He studied there until 1952, working closely with Endre Nemes, whose influence helped set Olson on a path toward lyrical abstraction. The following year he left for Paris, where he trained under Fernand Léger and never really left. The city became the center of his working life for the better part of seven decades.
In Paris, Olson developed a practice that moved fluidly across painting, printmaking, and large-scale public sculpture. During the 1970s he received commissions from the French state to create ten major monumental works in the city, combining sandblasted concrete with glazed ceramic tile - a technique that became his signature. He is credited as the artist who has installed the most large monumental works in Paris of any Swedish artist. His connection to Paris also brought him into collaboration with Norwegian artist Carl Nesjar, who had worked directly with Picasso on sandblasted concrete reliefs. Through Olson's initiative, Nesjar constructed the world's largest Picasso sculpture - the 15-meter-high "Jacqueline" in sandblasted concrete - in Olson's hometown of Kristinehamn, where it still stands.
His paintings range from abstract oil compositions to richly colored lithographs depicting Parisian street scenes, bridges, and urban motifs. Works such as the Götaälvbron lithograph series and a painting connected to the Malmö Concert Hall show how Olson moved between pure abstraction and a looser form of urban observation. He is represented in the collections of Moderna museet in Stockholm, Göteborgs konstmuseum, and the Tessininstitutet in Paris. In 2001, a major retrospective titled "Olson dans la lumière du Nord" (Olson in the Nordic Light) was held at the Musée Maillol in Paris, presenting 80 paintings. In 2017, he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government at the French Consulate in Stockholm. Around 2018 he returned to Sweden and settled in Gothenburg after decades abroad.
On the Swedish and Nordic auction market, Olson's work appears primarily through lithographs and oil paintings. The 54 items catalogued on Auctionist span compositions, city motifs, and a self-portrait, with the strongest representation at Karlstad Hammarö Auktionsverk, Bukowskis Stockholm, and Göteborgs Auktionsverk. Realized prices at Swedish auction have generally been modest - top results in the database reach 7,500 SEK for an oil composition and 5,500 SEK for another, with signed and numbered lithographs typically fetching 500-1,200 SEK. The gap between his institutional standing - French state commissions, Moderna museet representation, a Chevalier title - and auction prices for works on the secondary market reflects that much of his major output remains in public or private Parisian hands, rather than circulating through Swedish auction houses.