ArtistSwedish
Folke Gullby
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Folke Gullby (1912–1982) was born in Gullebo, Åtvidaberg, in the Tjust region of Småland, eastern Sweden. He grew up on a family farm whose rhythms and landscapes would define his artistic output for the rest of his life. At around eighteen he moved to Stockholm, where he trained at Blomberg's painting school before continuing his studies at Konstakademien, the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts.
Gullby worked primarily in etching and drypoint, techniques that suited his interest in texture, shadow, and the quiet details of rural existence. His prints document daily life on the ancestral farm with directness and warmth: stables and horses, seasonal fieldwork, domestic interiors, and the figures of family members going about ordinary tasks. The series is autobiographical in character, closer to a visual diary than to conventional landscape or genre painting.
His figurative work also extended to portraiture, including self-portraits that place him in the same farm setting. The etching "Venus i Sängen" shows a more intimate, personal register, while his landscapes of Östergötland and Småland capture subtle light changes across open agricultural terrain. He signed his prints consistently as "Gullby," and his works are dated from the early 1940s through the mid-1970s.
Gullby is represented in the collections of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Moderna Museet, and Kalmar Art Museum, confirming his standing in Swedish graphic art of the mid-twentieth century. His work remained strongly regional in subject matter, rooted in the eastern Swedish countryside rather than in urban modernism or international movements.
At auction, Gullby's etchings trade most actively at regional Swedish houses, particularly Gomér Linköping and SAV Magasin 5. Prices range from a few hundred SEK for smaller unsigned prints to around 1,900 EUR for desirable subjects such as "Venus i Sängen." Demand is stable among collectors of Swedish graphic art and regional prints, with condition and subject matter driving the largest price differences. Works signed and dated in pencil command premiums over unsigned or printed signatures.