ArtistSwedish-Norwegian
Gösta Calmeyer
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Rolf Gösta Calmeyer was born on 8 September 1927 in New York, the son of Swedish and Norwegian parents who moved the family to Stockholm the following year. His father, who was part of the design team behind the Ericofon - the telephone known as the 'cobra' that became one of Scandinavian design's most widely recognised objects - gave him an early education in the relationship between form, function, and material. The family eventually settled in Sweden, though Calmeyer spent significant periods of his adult life in Norway, a movement between the two countries that shaped both his social world and his artistic connections. He died on 1 April 2022 in Simrishamn.
His formal training included a period at Statens håndverks- og kunstindustriskole in Oslo from 1949 to 1950, where he absorbed the Norwegian modernist tradition that was then actively engaging with European abstraction. Back in Sweden, he developed a practice that moved between two distinct registers: carefully observed beach and coastal motifs from the Österlen landscape in the south of Skåne, and increasingly experimental abstract and collage works.
In the 1960s he became a member of the artist group '6 linjer', formed in Skåne in 1966, which brought together painters working in the wake of international abstraction. It was during this decade that his collage work took on particular ambition, incorporating fabric coated in plaster, paper, and materials such as toothpicks to build up surfaces that were as much sculptural as pictorial. Works from this period - including abstract compositions dated to 1961, 1963, and 1966 - have appeared at Swedish auctions and illustrate the range he was exploring at the time.
He was also a prolific illustrator, producing images for schoolbooks distributed across Sweden and Norway. This parallel strand of his work brought his imagery into Swedish classrooms for decades, giving him a quiet cultural presence that extended well beyond the gallery circuit.
His work entered significant public collections: Nationalmuseum, Moderna Museet, Statens konstråd, Ystads konstmuseum, Malmö museum, Kalmar museum, Östergötlands museum, Kristianstads museum, and several regional arts councils and municipalities. The breadth of institutional acquisition reflects a career that sustained critical attention across several decades. From 1982 onwards he alternated between Sweden and Norway, maintaining ties to both countries until late in his life.
On the Nordic auction market, Calmeyer's paintings appear primarily at houses in southern Sweden, consistent with his long connection to Österlen and the Skåne region. At Auctionist, his works have been offered through Crafoord Auktioner, Auktionshuset STO Bohuslän, Bukowskis, and Garpenhus Auktioner, among others. An abstract composition signed and dated 1963 sold for 6,032 SEK at Crafoord Auktioner Stockholm, while a still life from 1966 achieved 587 SEK at the Malmö branch of the same house. Coastal subjects - stones in water, harbour piers at Skillinge, landscapes with rocks - dominate the titles appearing in recent auction catalogues.