ArtistSwedish
Georg Ganmar
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Georg Ganmar was born on 11 September 1916 in Kolbäcks parish, Västmanland, under the family name Andersson. Before committing fully to art, he worked as a form caster at AB Kanthal in Hallstahammar, a factory background that gave him a practical, material-focused sensibility that would carry through his entire career. He later trained at Konstfack in Stockholm and went on to study at the Royal Institute of Art (Konstakademien), placing him firmly within the mid-century tradition of Swedish figurative sculpture.
Ganmar worked primarily in stone and bronze, with occasional forays into wood and terracotta. His preferred subjects were animals rendered with close observation and a feeling for arrested motion -- lynxes crouching and yawning, wild boars rooted to the ground, horses caught mid-gallop. He returned obsessively to the lynx (the Swedish lo or lodjur), producing variants across decades that range from taut and alert to languorously stretched. This animal served almost as a personal emblem, and auction catalogues from Stockholms Auktionsverk list titles such as 'Spanande lo' and 'Gäspande lokatt' alongside dated bronzes and gypsum casts from the 1950s onward.
Ganmar also worked on a larger civic scale. The granite sculpture 'Lokatt' (1962), sited at Maltesholmsskolan in Stockholm, shows the animal crouched and focused -- an image of coiled readiness suited to a school environment. His 'Vildsvin' in red granite (1968), placed in the Enbacken residential area in Tensta, and a second granite 'Vildsvin' (1969) at Barkabyskolan in Järfälla, demonstrate his involvement in Sweden's postwar programme of public art in schools and housing estates. These commissions made his work part of the everyday landscape for generations of Stockholm residents.
Beyond animals, a handful of figurative works survive in plaster -- female nudes from around 1950 and a religious wall relief -- suggesting that Ganmar was a broader sculptural thinker than the animal-specialist label implies. He died on 17 February 1979 in Sankt Matteus parish, Stockholm.
On the secondary market, Ganmar's sculpture circulates predominantly through Stockholm auction houses. The 12 items recorded on Auctionist span work in bronze, gypsum, and terracotta, with top houses including Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5 and Auktionshuset Kolonn. Among resolved sales, a 'Vildsvin' achieved 10,000 SEK, a 'Gäspande lokatt' reached 4,200 SEK, and a bronze 'Lodjur' from 1954 sold for 3,200 SEK -- pricing consistent with a well-regarded but regionally collected mid-century sculptor.