ArtistSwedish
Benno Arzt
1 active items
Benno Arzt was born in Stockholm in 1941, and his early formation as a painter was shaped by two quite different environments. He studied at Otto Skölds målarskola in Stockholm during 1960-61, one of the most respected independent painting schools in Sweden at the time, before embarking on two years of studies in Jerusalem under Professor Lord Aristo. That move to the Middle East was not incidental: the light, the layering of cultures, and the visual symbolism embedded in the region fed directly into his developing pictorial language.
Birds appear throughout his work not as decorative motifs but as compositional anchors. In canvases like "Birdwatcher" and "Composition with Birds," the figures seem to inhabit a space between observation and dream - the watcher watching, the birds indifferent to the boundary between painting and fable. His palette tends toward saturated, warm hues, with figures rendered in a semi-figurative register that owes something to Nordic Expressionism but refuses any single category.
From 1997 to 1999, Arzt lived and worked as an artist in Israel, returning to a geography that had shaped his early sensibility. This second Israeli period appears to have deepened his interest in the female figure and in the symbolism of natural forms - works like "Woman and Bird" and "A Woman's Mind" carry a psychological density that sits alongside his more openly playful compositions.
Beyond painting, Arzt has produced wooden sculptures, often on the same bird-and-nature themes as his canvas work. He also collaborated with the rug design platform CarpetVista/Rugvista, producing a collection of carpets suitable for both walls and floors - a crossover between fine art and functional design that extended the reach of his imagery beyond the gallery wall.
At auction, Arzt's work circulates primarily through Swedish regional houses. His 35 items across Auctionist's index are almost exclusively paintings, with Garpenhus Auktioner accounting for the largest share of appearances (17 lots), followed by Auctionet (6) and Skånes Auktionsverk (3). Realized prices have ranged from a few hundred to 4,400 SEK at the top end, with one notable outlier at 2,800 EUR for "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." His work reaches a consistent secondary market audience among collectors of contemporary Swedish figurative painting.