ArtistSwedish
Bror Hjorth
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Bror Hjorth grew up a few miles north of Uppsala in the 1890s, and the landscape, folk music, and vernacular culture of that region never left him - even after he had spent a decade studying and working in Paris. He arrived in the French capital in 1921 to train under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and while there he absorbed a wide range of influences: the monumental forms of Egyptian and Assyrian art, the rough vitality of Constantin Brancusi, and the expressive color of Paul Gauguin. What he brought back to Sweden was not imitation but synthesis.
Hjorth started as a sculptor and gradually became equally committed to painting. His output encompasses carved wood and stone reliefs, large-scale public bronzes, oil paintings, prints, and ceramics. The subjects he returned to most consistently were erotic encounters, folk musicians playing in meadows, creatures from Swedish folklore, and scenes of religious intensity - all treated with a physical directness that sits somewhere between primitive vigor and modernist distortion. Strong, unmodulated color and rough surface handling became his signatures.
His public works brought him a national audience. The altar triptych Laestadiusreliefen (1958), carved in wood for Jukkasjärvi Church in far northern Sweden, depicts the Laestadian revival movement with an almost visionary rawness. His largest sculpture, Näckens polska, was commissioned by Uppsala municipality in 1951 and stood outside the main railway station from 1967 - a bronze water spirit mid-dance that captures Hjorth's ability to make myth feel physical. He was awarded the Sergel Prize by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1955, and held a professorship at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1949 to 1959.
In the mid-1940s, Hjorth and his first wife Tove built a home and studio on Norbyvägen outside Uppsala. He lived and worked there for the rest of his life, and the house is now Bror Hjorths Hus - a museum holding a broad selection of his work and hosting guest exhibitions. The museum has collaborated with Moderna Museet Stockholm on joint presentations of his work, helping reintroduce Hjorth to younger audiences who may know his public sculptures without knowing his paintings.
At auction, Hjorth appears across a range of formats. On Auctionist, his 20 catalogued items span sculptures, paintings, drawings, and ceramics, with Bukowskis Stockholm handling the largest share followed by Uppsala Auktionskammare - fitting for an artist so tied to that city. Top recorded sales include a reclining model figure at 6,500 SEK and a plaster sculpture titled "I tankar" at 2,800 SEK. Works on paper and smaller plaster studies circulate regularly, making him accessible to collectors at multiple price levels.