ArtistSwedish
Birger Birger-Ericson
1 active items
Birger Birger-Ericson, born Birger Eriksson on 24 January 1904 in Nyköping, lived and worked in Stockholm until his death on 29 September 1994. He was largely self-taught, though he attended Wilhelmssons målarskola in Stockholm for a period, which gave him some formal grounding in painting technique. The decision to take the hyphenated name Birger-Ericson was part of a professional identity he constructed around his first name, which he also used as his primary signature on paintings.
His output divided between easel painting and work as a press illustrator, where he contributed comic drawings to Swedish newspapers and periodicals. These two strands of his career ran in parallel and reflect the practical reality of many Swedish artists of his generation, for whom editorial and illustration work provided income while painting remained the more personal pursuit.
As a painter, Birger-Ericson devoted the larger part of his attention to Stockholm and its immediate surroundings. He painted street scenes, terraces, courtyards, waterways, and suburban landscapes with a directness and warmth that has been described as naively charming and romantically expressive. The city he depicted was not the grand Stockholm of monuments but the lived, particular city of specific corners and ordinary afternoons. Works such as "Operaterrassen", "Tivolit", "Soderkåkar", and "Höstdag i Vaxholm" give a sense of his range from the central city to the archipelago fringe.
He also produced figure paintings, including religious subjects such as "Flykten till Egypten" (The Flight into Egypt) and portraits. The genre of the religious composition sits alongside his Stockholm views without particular tension; both reflect an artist whose instinct was toward warmth of surface and clarity of expression rather than formal experimentation.
At auction, Birger-Ericson's work is traded at a modest but consistent level within Swedish houses. The platform holds 14 items, one of which is currently active. His highest recorded price is 8,500 SEK for "Operaterrassen", with "Flykten till Egypten" selling at 1,500 SEK. Stockholms Auktionsverk accounts for the largest share of his auction appearances, followed by Auktionshuset Thörner and Ek and Roslagens Auktionsverk, all houses with strong regional and local collector bases suited to his subject matter.