ArtistSwedish
Lars Bertle
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Lars Bertil Bertle was born on July 17, 1925 in Helsingborg, where he would spend the whole of his working life. He came to painting relatively late: after a long professional career outside the arts, he turned to oil painting in 1968 at the age of 43 and never looked back. His formation was entirely self-directed, supplemented by study trips through northern Europe, and that independent path shaped both the confidence and the idiosyncratic directness of his finished work.
Bertle's primary medium is oil, applied with brush and palette knife on canvas, board, and panel. The palette knife in particular gives his surfaces a physical energy, ridges of paint catch the light and the eye, lending even quiet subjects a sense of restlessness. His subjects cluster into three recurring groups: winter landscapes with bare trees and muted northern light, figures caught in movement (skaters, walkers, people at the edge of a crowd), and still lifes that treat everyday objects with the same spatial seriousness as the outdoor scenes. Coastal motifs feature too, ranging from the Bohuslän shoreline to the Norwegian coast, reflecting the study trips he made during his formative years.
He co-founded Galleri Nordvästen in Helsingborg in 1970, two years into his full-time career, which placed him at the center of a small but active regional art scene in northwestern Skåne. He has shown at Vikingsbergs Konstmuseum in Helsingborg, Galleri HERA in Stockholm, and Galleri Viktoria in Gothenburg, alongside regular participation in Konstrundan i Nordvästra Skåne, the open-studio circuit that connects artists in the Helsingborg, Höganäs, Ängelholm, and Landskrona area. His studio is at Miatorp, outside Helsingborg.
His work entered several significant public collections, including Helsingborgs Museum, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Malmö Museum, Landskrona Museum, and the Swedish Arts Council (Statens konstråd). The breadth of these acquisitions speaks to a sustained institutional engagement over decades rather than a single moment of recognition. He also received a state artist pension, confirming a career-long relationship with Swedish public arts support.
Bertle received Helsingborgs Stads Kulturstipendium in 1967, the year before he became a full-time painter, suggesting the city had already taken note of his work, followed by Malmöhus läns landstings Kulturstipendium in 1975, Statens Konstnärsbidrag in both 1978 and 1992, and the Ellen Trotzig Stipendium in 1985. These awards trace a career that gathered momentum gradually and held it well into middle age.
At auction, Bertle appears primarily through Helsingborgs Auktionskammare, which has handled the large majority of his approximately 72 recorded lots, with further appearances at Auctionet, Halmstads AK, Crafoord Malmö, and Skånes Auktionsverk. Prices have been modest, with top results in the range of 1,400 SEK for small groups of works, consistent with a regional market for an artist whose reputation has always been rooted in Skåne rather than the Stockholm gallery circuit.