ArtistSwedish
Ivar Hjertqvist
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Ivar Sture Oscar Hjertqvist was born on April 12, 1907, in Härnösand, the coastal city on the Ångerman River estuary in Västernorrland that would shape the geography of his entire artistic life. After completing his studies at the Högre konstindustriella skolan in Stockholm from 1929 to 1932, he received a scholarship from Slöjdföreningen that took him to the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. He followed that with study trips across England, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, and the Balkans, building a European visual vocabulary that he would later filter through a distinctly northern Swedish sensibility.
On returning to Sweden, Hjertqvist worked for a period as a commercial artist before his range broadened considerably. In 1937 he was among the founders of SAFFT (Svenska affischtecknare, the Association of Swedish Poster Designers) and participated in its inaugural exhibition that same year. He continued working across multiple disciplines: book and magazine illustration, commercial design, and an increasingly committed practice as an easel painter. His subjects ranged from dam construction sites and timber-floating operations on northern rivers to mountain panoramas, portraits, and still lifes, all handled in oil, tempera, and gouache.
The expressionist quality of his painting is direct. Brushwork tends toward the energetic rather than the measured, and his palette leans into the particular light of the subarctic interior - the grey-blue of overcast fjäll, the warm amber of autumn birches above a river. Nämforsen, the famous rock-carving site on the Ångerman River, and the broader Höga Kusten landscape appear repeatedly in his work. In the 1940s he received commissions for monumental paintings in Ångermanland and Jämtland, including works in Hackås Church and Murberget Church, giving his art a public presence in the region he painted most consistently.
Hjertqvist also exhibited at the Gummeson Gallery in Stockholm, gaining exposure beyond a purely regional audience. His work spans the full arc of Swedish mid-century painting, from social-realist overtones in his labour scenes to more freely composed late landscapes. He died on August 29, 1983, back in Härnösand, where he had been born seventy-six years earlier.
On Auctionist, Hjertqvist is represented by 13 items, all oil paintings, predominantly handled through Stadsauktion Sundsvall (6 lots), with further appearances at Auctionet and Gomér & Andersson in both Jönköping and Norrköping. The concentration in Sundsvall is geographically fitting. Recent titles include 'Flottare' (a log-floating scene), 'Drivved' (driftwood), and a 'Skjuten björn på tak' (shot bear on a roof), suggesting a continued appetite for his norrländska subject matter. Recorded prices in the database sit between 300 and 350 SEK, placing him among the more accessible mid-century Swedish regionalists at auction.