ArtistSwedish
Gunnar Greiber
0 active items
Gunnar Fredrik Greiber was born in Stockholm in 1919 and spent his childhood there, teaching himself to draw and paint without formal art schooling. His early influences came from close study of both older masters and the contemporary Swedish art scene, and by the late 1950s he had developed a sufficiently distinct voice to step into the public sphere.
His debut came in 1959 at the exhibition Modern konst i hemmiljö in Stockholm. Over the following years he became a regular presence at major venues, showing at the Liljevalchs Stockholmssalong between 1962 and 1965 and appearing in Moderna Museet's travelling exhibition Konst i skolan in 1963. His commercial gallery work continued at Sveagalleriet, where he had solo shows in 1968, 1971, and 1980.
The paintings that secured his artistic breakthrough were a series he called Broderier, which emerged in the early 1960s. These works built a distinctive visual language around checkered and grid-like patterning layered with birds, flowers, and female figures, giving them an intensity that crossed decorative pleasure with something harder to categorise. He typically worked in oil directly on unprimed canvas, using blue, yellow, and red mixed into varied tones, and often applied paint thickly in a pastose manner. He also worked on masonite, which he primed himself with white or grey ground.
In 1967 Greiber bought the old schoolhouse in Grängsjö in northern Hälsingland. The move shifted his painting substantially. The Grängsjö period brought darker, more atmospheric canvases - moody blue landscapes where light falls indirectly and titles are lettered directly onto the surface in large characters. He held summer exhibitions in Grängsjö for more than thirty years and ran art courses for local participants alongside his own studio practice. A Stockholm studio remained part of his working life throughout.
During the 1970s his colour palette grew lighter and his subjects became more narrative and popular in register. The oscillation between bold pattern-based work and landscape continued to define his output. In 2004 he drew public attention by advertising his paintings at ten million kronor - an intentional provocation to open debate about how art is valued. In 2005 he received the honorary award of Hälsingeakademien for painting described as work that changes how we see.
At his death in Stockholm in 2011, Greiber and his wife Else Nyström Greiber bequeathed around a thousand artworks together with over 1.3 million kronor in securities and cash to Nordanstigs municipality, establishing a fund and permanent collection. His work is held in public collections including Moderna Museet, Västerås Konstmuseum, Sundsvalls Museum, Länsmuseet Gävle, Östersunds Museum, and Hälsinglands Museum.
At auction, Greiber's work appears regularly through Stadsauktion Sundsvall, Stockholms Auktionsverk, and Bukowskis Stockholm. Realized prices have typically been modest, with gouaches and oils settling in the low thousands of Swedish kronor, reflecting a regional rather than national market presence. Collectors drawn to mid-century Swedish figurative painting and pattern-based work will find a consistent body of signed works across multiple houses.