ArtistSwedish
KG Nilson
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Karl Gustaf Nilson, who signs his work KG Nilson, was born on 23 January 1942 in Falun, Sweden. His formation as an artist moved through several distinct environments: Valand Academy in Gothenburg in 1961, then Atelier 17 in Paris the following year - the influential printmaking studio founded by William Hayter - and finally the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1963 to 1968. During the same period he studied aesthetics, art history, and literature at Uppsala University, earning a degree in 1966. This dual grounding in studio practice and theoretical study would define the work that followed.
The paintings and prints Nilson has produced over more than six decades are rooted in the tradition of Concrete Art, with clear debts to the Bauhaus, and in particular to Josef Albers' investigations into how colours change in relation to one another. Yet Nilson's work is not purely abstract in the classical sense. He uses recognisable motifs - stylised maps, aerial city views, isolated islands, simple house forms, and geometric shapes with the triangle as a recurring element - as carriers for chromatic exploration. The image is a pretext; the colour interaction is the subject.
For over two decades he was central to art education in Sweden. From 1972 to 1983 he taught colour theory at Konstfack, the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. In 1983 he was appointed Professor of Graphic Art at the Royal Institute of Art, a post he held until 1993. His thinking on colour has also reached beyond the studio: he published "Färglära" (Colour Theory) in 1982, a work that has gone through multiple editions, and his most recent book "Om färg" (About Colour) appeared in 2018.
His public commissions include a ballot urn and voting box for the Swedish Riksdag, delivered in 1998. The urn's surface pattern is drawn from a stylised map of Sweden - a characteristic convergence of cartographic imagery and colour structure. He has exhibited widely in Sweden and internationally, with solo shows in Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland. His work is held in the collections of Moderna Museet and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, among other institutions.
On the Swedish auction market, KG Nilson's work appears at Bukowskis and Stockholms Auktionsverk. The 14 items tracked in the Auctionist database are predominantly paintings and prints, with the top auction result reaching 38,000 SEK for "Huset" sold at Stockholms Auktionsverk. Other recorded sales include "I dimma" at 15,525 SEK and "Taret/kuben" at 5,000 SEK. Lithographs and colour prints from the 1970s and 1980s appear regularly at lower price points, reflecting steady collector interest in his graphic work alongside the stronger demand for his paintings.