ArtistSwedish
Mats Hådell
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Mats Hådell was born in 1958 on Södermalm in Stockholm and spent much of his early adult life far from the art world, working as a butcher and hunter. It was in the forests, tracking game through the Swedish landscape, that the imagery which would later define his paintings first took shape in his imagination. In the mid-1980s, a period of extended sick leave gave him the time and space to put those images on canvas, and he never looked back.
Hådell's work divides broadly into two recurring worlds. The first is populated by trolls — not the fearsome creatures of older Nordic folklore, but beings closer in spirit to the playful, round-faced figures of Swedish childrens' book culture. Where John Bauer, his primary inspiration, cast trolls against shadowed forests and brooding skies, Hådell placed them in sunshine, gave them musical instruments, and set them laughing under mushrooms. The shift in mood was deliberate: his trolls inhabit a childhood fantasy world where the sun always shines and nothing is truly threatening.
The second world is the Stockholm archipelago. Hådell made frequent trips out among the islands, and his oil paintings and colour lithographs of coastal scenes carry the same warmth as his troll work — glittering water, summer light, boats at anchor, figures on rocks. Titles like 'Norrskär', 'Blidösund', and 'Västan' track specific island locations across the outer archipelago east of the city. His prints were produced in signed, numbered editions, many marked EA (epreuve d'artiste), which circulated widely through Swedish galleries and art retail.
Beyond galleries, Hådell's imagery found its way into corporate Sweden in a way few self-taught painters manage. Coca-Cola, Falcon Brewery, ICA, the Swedish Animal Welfare Society, and the Swedish Ice Hockey Association all used his work, lending his cheerful visual language an unusually broad cultural reach.
Hådell died in 2021. On the Swedish secondary market, his work appears regularly at regional auction houses across the country. On Auctionist, 12 of his works have passed through auction, primarily at Gomér & Andersson Nyköping, Stadsauktion Sundsvall, and Stockholms Auktionsverk. Recorded results include oil paintings of trolls fetching 1,200 SEK and colour lithographs of archipelago motifs selling in the 500–950 SEK range, consistent with his position as a warmly regarded popular artist whose prints remain accessible and actively traded.