ArtistSwedish
Igge Karlsson
1 active items
Igge Karlsson - born Ingvar Torgny Karlsson on February 14, 1932, in Storkyrkoförsamlingen, Stockholm - trained at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1950 to 1956 under Sven Erixson and Olle Nyman, two formative figures in mid-century Swedish painting. He returned to the institution from 1960 to 1962 to study at its graphics school, a decision that would define a significant part of his practice.
His debut exhibition took place in 1956 at Lilla Paviljongen, the Stockholm gallery run by Ebba Pettersson, known in the city's art world simply as Fröken Petra. A 1962 show at Konstnärshuset on Smålandsgatan featured expressionist landscape paintings in strong, saturated color, establishing the tone of his work: a push toward emotional directness through color, influenced by French Fauvist painters including Henri Matisse and Maurice de Vlaminck, and by the Gothenburg Colorist tradition he had encountered through his teachers.
Karlsson was central to expanding the technical possibilities of serigraphy as an art form in Sweden. Working with Stockholm printer Ove Lööf, he was among the first Swedish artists to develop serigraphy as a fine art medium rather than a commercial process, helping to establish it alongside lithography as a serious graphic practice. His graphic output alongside his oil paintings made him a connector between painting and printmaking in Swedish postwar art.
Gotland became his summer home and a major source of subject matter. The island's light, its specific palette of sea, limestone, and meadow, and its fauna fed into both his paintings and graphics. Horses appear repeatedly in his work - a recurring motif rendered with expressionist energy in both oil and color lithograph. He worked in oil, watercolor, and lithography, and produced etchings throughout his career. He has been described as a painters' painter, an acknowledgment of the technical seriousness with which colleagues regarded his work. He died in December 2009.
Karlsson's work is held by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, with around 30 works in the collection spanning the late 1950s through the 1980s. On Auctionist, 17 items are documented, appearing across houses including Gomér and Andersson Linköping, Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5, and several regional auction houses. The works span oils, color lithographs, and prints. The top recorded sale on the platform is a horse composition in oil at 1,600 SEK, with lithographs realizing between 200 and 600 SEK, consistent with the modest secondary market pricing typical of Swedish postwar graphic artists.