ArtistSwedish
Bror Forslund
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Bror Hilding Forslund (1909-1982) was a Swedish sculptor born on 13 July 1909 in Kävlinge, a small town in Skane in the far south of Sweden. Working in a figurative tradition rooted in mid-century Scandinavian sculpture, he built a body of work spanning intimate portrait busts and small wooden figures to publicly commissioned bronze sculptures placed in churches and schoolyards across southern Sweden.
Forslund's formal training took him across the Oresund to Copenhagen, where he studied under Kurt Harald Isenstein, a German-Danish sculptor known for his expressive figurative work and, later, for his survival of the Nazi period and activity within the Danish cultural resistance. The influence of this training is visible in Forslund's preference for the human figure as his primary sculptural subject: his works return repeatedly to the body, rendered with warmth and craft rather than abstraction or ideological charge.
His output divides broadly into three registers. The most intimate are his portrait busts and figurines, including a documented figurine of his daughter Marie-Louise, which reveals the domestic and personal dimension of his practice. A second register is the small-scale edition bronze, produced for wider circulation: in 1978 he designed three bronze compositions for Scandia Present AB, titled 'Dansa min docka' (Dance My Doll), 'Ida', and 'Masen' (The Seagull). These were produced in numbered editions and have appeared regularly at Swedish auction houses ever since, making them the works by which Forslund is most commonly encountered on the art market today.
The third register is his public sculpture. A female figure titled 'Ungdom' (Youth), dating from 1952, stands as one of his more substantial contributions. His public decorative commissions include work for churches in Hogby, Hassleholm, and Va, alongside outdoor sculptures at Vaggaskolan in Karlshamn, where larger versions of his Scandia Present bronzes were installed. He is represented in the collection of Karlshamns Museum and was acquired by the collection of King Gustav VI Adolf, a monarch whose personal connoisseurship and support of Swedish contemporary art gave institutional weight to the artists whose work he chose.
Forslund died in 1982. His work appears primarily at auction houses in southern and central Sweden, with Ekenbergs accounting for the largest share of his market appearances, followed by Goteborgs Auktionsverk, Stadsauktion Sundsvall, and Orebro Stadsauktioner. The 'Dansa min docka' series remains his most traded work, with examples selling in both SEK and EUR across different auction contexts.