ArtistSwedish
Jarl Ingvarsson
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Jarl Ingvarsson was born in 1955 in Asmara, then part of Ethiopia and now the capital of Eritrea, to Swedish parents. He began his formal art education at Nyckelviksskolan in Lidingö in 1977-1978 before entering the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, where he studied from 1978 to 1983. His debut came in 1983, the same year he completed his studies, and he has maintained an unbroken exhibiting practice in the decades since.
His painting moves across a territory between figurative expressionism and abstraction, refusing to settle in either camp. The work that emerged from the 1980s carried clear marks of that decade's new expressionism - large-scale formats, raw energy, strong color - but Ingvarsson extended this language into more introspective and intellectually layered territory over time. He draws from personal experience, everyday objects like stools or flowers, comic book imagery, and biblical narratives, weaving together the mundane and the mythological without hierarchy. Painting itself remains the subject as much as any particular motif.
His work is held in public collections across Sweden, including Moderna museet in Stockholm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Borås konstmuseum, Malmö konstmuseum, and Norrköpings konstmuseum, as well as in private collections internationally. He has shown extensively with Galerie Forsblom in Stockholm, including the 2020 exhibition 'FABRICAE', in which he painted on found textiles - sheets, fiber cloths, sun-blinds gathered in and around Borås, a city defined by its textile industry - folding material and process directly into the subject of the work. Lars Bohman Gallery in Stockholm has also represented him, with a solo exhibition in 2016.
In 1996 Ingvarsson was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden. In 2018, King Carl XVI Gustaf awarded him the Prins Eugen Medal, given for distinguished contributions to Swedish art. The medal, named for the painter prince who championed Swedish artists in the early twentieth century, carries particular resonance for a painter who has worked with consistent ambition across four decades. Ingvarsson continues to exhibit in Scandinavia and internationally.