ArtistSwedish
Kjell Högström
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Kjell Bertil Högström was born on 6 February 1930 in Lund, in the southernmost Swedish province of Skåne, and spent much of his working life connected to the coastal town of Höganäs. He died on 26 December 2012. Self-taught throughout, he arrived at painting without the institutional passage through art academies that shaped many of his contemporaries, a path that left its mark on the directness and personal register of his work.
Högström worked primarily in oil on canvas and panel, alongside tempera and mixed media on paper. His subjects returned repeatedly to the landscapes of southern Sweden - Öland's flat light, the rocky coastlines of the Kullaberg peninsula - and to domestic still lifes: kitchen tables, bureau tops arranged with everyday objects, the particular stillness of interior space. His figure studies, executed in charcoal, showed an equal interest in the human presence within these environments.
His palette tended toward muted, observational tones rather than expressive colour contrasts, though works such as the 1967 oil on panel described as a modernist landscape suggest a willingness to simplify and abstract form when the subject called for it. Titles across his career - "Fiskeflaggor" (fishing flags), "Kobbar i havet" (skerries at sea), "Stilleben på byrån" (still life on the bureau) - point to a painter attentive to the textures of life in coastal Skåne, without sentimentalising them.
Högström's work entered the permanent collections of three Swedish museums: Malmö Museum, Helsingborg Museum, and Landskrona Museum. Museum representation across three institutions speaks to the consistent regard in which regional Swedish art circles held his output over a career spanning several decades.
On the auction market, all 18 items attributed to Högström on Auctionist have sold exclusively through southern Swedish houses: Höganäs Auktionsverk accounts for seven lots, followed by Helsingborgs Auktionskammare with five and Skånes Auktionsverk with four. This geographic concentration reflects both the regional rootedness of his practice and the collector base that has sustained interest in his work. Price levels have been modest, with the strongest result standing at 625 SEK for a green landscape oil on panel from 1967, and several canvases selling in the 300-550 SEK range. His prints - numbered lithographs including editions of "Fiskeflaggor" - have reached similar levels.