ArtistSwedish
Folke Lind
2 active items
Folke Arvid Mikael Lind was born on 14 April 1931 in Gothenburg and spent most of his life in the city, dying there on 29 April 2017. Growing up in Gothenburg gave him a connection to the west coast landscape, wildlife, and maritime environment that would surface throughout his work. His formative training came through studies under Nils Wedel at Slöjdföreningens skola and then under Endre Nemes and Torsten Renqvist at Valands målarskola in Gothenburg from 1954 to 1956. He supplemented these years with studio visits and study trips to the Netherlands, Italy, France, and England.
Lind worked across oil on canvas, pastel, gouache, and printmaking, returning frequently to the subjects of birds, coastal landscapes, still lifes, and figures. His colour lithographs stand out in particular for their close observation of birds of prey and waterbirds, including hawks, razorbills, and tufted ducks. Titles such as "Hök och knipor" (Hawk and goldeneyes) and "Tordmular" (Razorbills) illustrate a sustained interest in the natural world that ran alongside his more formal studio work.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Lind was a member of the artist group Sex aspekter (Six Aspects), which he formed with Bertil Berg, Roj Friberg, Bernt Jonasson, Åke Nilsson, and Gunnar Thorén. The group exhibited together at multiple venues and represented a strand of post-war Gothenburg figuration that balanced personal observation against broader currents in European modernism. Alongside this group activity, Lind also worked as an illustrator, contributing to the magazine Folket i Bild and Volvo's in-house publication Ratten.
His 1970 painting "Mutation", held in the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, is among his most discussed works. The piece engages directly with contemporary anxiety about genetic engineering and its consequences, placing Lind within a generation of Swedish artists who found ways to connect personal craft with social and scientific questions of the time. Beyond Moderna Museet, his work entered the collections of Göteborgs konstmuseum, Kalmar konstmuseum, Borås konstmuseum, Västerås konstmuseum, and Eskilstuna konstmuseum.
On the auction market, Lind's work appears regularly at auction houses along the Swedish west coast, particularly Auktionshuset STO Bohuslän, Göteborgs Auktionsverk, and Lysekils Auktionsbyrå, consistent with a career rooted in Gothenburg and the surrounding region. Among the 19 works tracked on Auctionist, prices have ranged from modest sums for unsigned graphics to 4,250 SEK for the oil painting "Muren" and 950 EUR for an early self-portrait. His wildlife lithographs, including signed and numbered editions of hawks and razorbills, have attracted steady collector interest.