ArtistSwedish
Bertil Öhlund
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Bertil Alexander Öhlund was born on 17 November 1923 in Solna, just north of Stockholm. His path into painting followed a rigorous sequence of formal study: he entered Otte Skölds Målarskola in Stockholm in 1949, then moved to Paris the same year to attend the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. There he studied directly under André Lhote, the Cubist painter and theorist whose structured approach to color and geometry would leave a lasting mark on Öhlund's thinking. On returning to Sweden he enrolled at the Kungliga Konsthögskolan (Royal Institute of Art) in Stockholm, graduating in 1955.
By 1957 Öhlund had formulated a written manifesto explaining what he called "Dioptric" - his term for a pictorial effect of three-dimensional refraction, achieved through systematic manipulation of movement, tension, and shape repetition in paint. The manifesto read in part: "The problem with which I fight in my paintings is to make an analyzed synthesis of form and color." When he first exhibited the Dioptric works in Paris that year, critics positioned him alongside Victor Vasarely and Auguste Herbin - two central figures in what would soon be called Op art. Öhlund had arrived at similar optical conclusions from a different angle, through the lens of his training under Lhote.
His career spanned both Sweden and Belgium, and he participated in group exhibitions at the Galerie Creuze in Paris from 1957 onward. He also took part in the Fifth International Hallmark Art Award, a traveling exhibition that visited museums across the United States between 1960 and 1962, giving his work transatlantic exposure. Works from this period - oils, drawings, and a substantial body of color silkscreen prints - entered the collections of Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, as well as institutions in the United States and France. From 1979 to 1985 he served as chairman of the Swedish Artists' Association (Svenska Konstnärernas Förening), a role that reflected his standing within the Swedish art world.
Stockholm recognized his contributions twice with the Stockholms Kulturpris, in 1971 and again in 1977. He had earlier received the Otte Sköld prize four times between 1949 and 1953. Öhlund spent the later decades of his life in Brussels, where he died in 2003.
On the auction market, Öhlund's work appears most frequently through Swedish regional houses. At Auctionist, his 13 catalogued lots are dominated by his color silkscreen prints, with a set of ten signed and dated serigrapher reaching over 2,400 EUR at RA Auktionsverket Norrköping - his highest recorded price in the database. Other prints have sold in the 400-860 EUR range. His paintings, including a signed landscape in oil on panel, have attracted more modest results, reflecting the stronger collector demand for his graphic work.