ArtistSwedish
Bo Beskow
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Bo Viktor Beskow grew up in Djursholm, Stockholm, in a family where art and ideas were part of daily life. His father was Natanael Beskow, a theologian and pacifist; his mother was Elsa Beskow, the illustrator whose picture books became part of Swedish childhood for generations. He studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm from 1926, and in the decades that followed built a practice that moved between easel painting, monumental fresco, and architectural glass.
The commission that would occupy more than three decades of his working life began in 1945: thirty-seven stained glass windows for Skara Cathedral, Sweden's oldest episcopal seat. Working in close collaboration with glazier Gustav Ringström, Beskow taught himself the medieval techniques required to achieve the precise colour saturation he wanted. The windows depict biblical narratives across the entire nave, and the project continued until 1976 - an undertaking of a scale and duration that has few parallels in 20th-century Swedish religious art.
Alongside the cathedral work, Beskow produced frescoes for burial chapels in Djursholm and Norrköping, an altarpiece for the Christinae Church in Alingsås, and murals in schools across Stockholm. His work moved between the spiritual and the secular without treating them as opposites - the same direct, figurative language ran through his religious commissions and his easel paintings of markets, landscapes, and human figures.
His friendship with Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish diplomat who served as UN Secretary-General from 1953 until his death in 1961, shaped the last major chapter of his monumental work. Hammarskjöld had introduced Beskow to the landscape around Österlen in Skåne, where Beskow bought a house in 1945 and where Hammarskjöld later acquired his retreat at Backåkra. In 1957, Hammarskjöld commissioned Beskow to paint the fresco for the UN Meditation Room in the General Assembly Building in New York. After Hammarskjöld's death, Beskow was commissioned again to create a large mural for the Dag Hammarskjöld Library penthouse. He later wrote a personal memoir of their friendship, published by Bonnier in 1968.
Descow moved from Stockholm to Söderköping, near Norrköping, in 1961, and died in Östergötland in 1989 at the age of 83. His work in the UN buildings in New York remains among the most visible examples of Swedish art in a global institutional context.
On the Nordic auction market, Beskow's paintings appear regularly at Stockholms Auktionsverk and Bukowskis, with 19 works recorded on Auctionist. Oils on panel have achieved prices between 8,000 and 21,000 SEK for figurative compositions, with one work recorded at 11,834 EUR. His market is strongest for the figurative oils - beach scenes, market subjects, and figure compositions - rather than his ecclesiastical work, which remains permanently sited.