ArtistSwedish Sami
Lars Pirak
3 active items
Lars Pirak was born in 1932 at the Karats mountain lake in the Tuorpon Sami village, fifty miles from Jokkmokk. He grew up in the reindeer herding culture that would become the central subject of his art, a life shaped by seasonal migrations across the mountain landscape of Swedish Lapland. He was among the first Sami artists to gain international recognition, and his work spans oil painting, watercolour, sculpture, and traditional Sami craft including carved knives, wooden drinking vessels (kaasor), and objects in reindeer horn.
Pirak's paintings depict the Sami world with an insider's knowledge and an artist's formal intelligence: reindeer herds against vast mountain backdrops, the specific light of the subarctic seasons, the rhythms of gathering, separation, and migration that structure the herding year. His most significant painting, created in the late 1980s, portrays his parents in a vast mountainous landscape and was specifically made to hang in the family's Sami goahti (dwelling) in Parka, southeast of Kvikkjokk. This painting is now part of the Moderna Museet collection in Stockholm.
Since 1950, Pirak exhibited throughout Sweden and internationally, including the World Exhibition in New York, and in Canberra, Basel, Helsinki, and Tokyo. He created works for the Sami Folk High School in Jokkmokk and the town hall in Pitea. He died in 2008.
At auction, Pirak's work appears through northern Swedish houses including Norrlands Auktionsverk and Stadsauktion Sundsvall, alongside Auktionshuset Kolonn and Stockholms Auktionsverk. Oil paintings of reindeer and Sami life reach 12,055 to 14,500 EUR. The 156 items on Auctionist include paintings, prints, and Sami craft objects, reflecting his breadth as both fine artist and traditional craftsman.