ArtistSwedish
Folke Ricklund
4 active items
Folke Ricklund was born in 1900 in Solberg, Anundsjö, in Ångermanland - a corner of northern Sweden where the land rises sharply toward the Norwegian border. His father was a state forester, and the rhythms of the northern Swedish outdoors, hunting, fishing, tracking animals through deep-winter forest, were part of his upbringing from the start. That early formation was not merely biographical background: it became the central subject of his entire life's work.
He studied at the Technical School and the Higher School of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack) in Stockholm from 1920 to 1924, and also spent time studying in Italy. The formal training gave him technical grounding in figure composition and printmaking, but the mountains drew him north. By the early 1930s he had settled in Saxnäs, a mountain village south of the Marsfjäll massif in what is now Västerbotten County, where he met and married Emma.
In Saxnäs, Ricklund sought out the Sámi community with genuine curiosity, spending extended periods participating in everyday reindeer-herding life - separations, slaughter, seasonal movements across the mountain landscape. This closeness shaped a body of painting that treats Sámi and Norwegian Lapland subjects with an insider's detail rather than an outsider's romanticisation. He also helped found Västerbottens konstförening together with the first generation of artists working in the region.
The couple built their home, Ricklundgården, on a hill above Kultsjön with the Marsfjäll range in the background in the late 1940s. The house became a gathering point: guests included Asger Jorn from the CoBrA group, who left several works behind, along with Swedish painters Helmer Osslund and Sven X:et Erixson. After he and Emma separated in 1952, Ricklund moved to Norrköping, though from 1974 he maintained a mountain studio near Funäsdalen in Härjedalen, returning every year until late in his life. Emma Ricklund's wish was fulfilled when the Emma Ricklund Foundation was formed in 1971; Ricklundgården is today a museum and artist residency.
Beyond oil painting, Ricklund worked extensively in color lithography from the 1960s through the 1980s, producing limited-edition prints with subjects drawn from the hunting and fishing world he had inhabited since childhood: ptarmigan flushes, fishing camps, rutting elk, the compressed action of a hunting dog on point. Titles such as "Ståndskall" (on point), "Ripfångaren" (ptarmigan catcher), and "Raid" appear in numbered editions of 310.
At auction, Ricklund's works surface most consistently at houses in Sundsvall, Norrköping, and Stockholm - a distribution that mirrors the arc of his own life between the mountains and the east coast cities. On the Auctionist platform, his 18 recorded lots include both oil paintings and lithographs. The top sale is a 1947 oil titled "Vårregn" (Spring Rain), which sold for 2,700 SEK. Hunting-themed lithographs from the 1970s and 1980s trade in the 300-400 SEK range, while mountain oil panels from the 1940s see modest but reliable demand.