ArtistSwedish
Jordi Arkö
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A farmstead outside Mora in Dalarna has been Jordi Arkö's base for much of his adult life, a geographic anchoring that sits in deliberate contrast to a career built on international exhibitions and an output rooted in the oldest techniques of printmaking. Born in Stockholm on 21 May 1951, he studied at Stockholm University from 1971 to 1974 before entering the Royal Institute of Art, where he completed his training between 1975 and 1980.
His decade at the Royal Institute extended well beyond student years: from 1980 to 1993 he taught there as a senior lecturer in graphic art, shaping a generation of Swedish printmakers. He also held a visiting position at the Dublin National College of Art and Design from 1990 to 1993, and later served as artistic director of Grafikens Hus in Mariefred in 2003 before moving into the role of art consultant in Dalarna. The breadth of these positions reflects both his technical authority and his sustained commitment to printmaking as a living discipline.
Arkö works principally in intaglio techniques, etching and drypoint, alongside colour lithography. His imagery draws on a wide repertoire: masks and portrait heads, allegorical cycles, mythological figures, rune stones, and the deeply human drama of medieval Scandinavian narrative. This last interest produced his most substantial single project, an illustrated edition of Frans G. Bengtsson's Viking Age novel Röde Orm. Exhibited at Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm in 1991 and subsequently at Centre Culturel Suédois in Paris and the Altes Museum in Berlin in 1992, the project comprised 210 lithographs in a two-volume deluxe cassette, as well as a freestanding pictorial narrative of 132 images. The American leg of the tour included the American-Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, and the Swedish American Museum Center in Chicago.
His printmaking is represented in major public collections across Europe and North America, including the Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Norrköpings konstmuseum, Dalarnas Museum, Skissernas Museum in Lund, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, and institutions in Finland. He has received numerous grants and prizes, among them the Sallbergs Stipendium from the Art Academy (1977), the Axel Hirsch stipendium (1980), first prize at the Young Draftsmen competition (1981), the Biennial Prize at Rauma, Finland (1984), the Albert Bonnier centennial award (1992), and the Graphic Society's stipendium (1994).
On the Nordic auction market, Arkö appears across a spread of smaller Swedish houses, with 13 lots recorded on Auctionist at venues including Metropol, Auktionshuset Kolonn, and Södermanlands Auktionsverk. His works include signed etchings, numbered lithographs, and the Röde Orm cassettes in both single and double-volume formats. Realised prices have been modest, with the top result reaching 300 EUR for a numbered etching titled Livets hjul. The market reflects a collector base drawn primarily to signed and numbered graphics rather than speculative investment, consistent with his standing as a technically serious artist with strong institutional support.