ArtistSwedish
Nils Kölare
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Seven tram stops along Stockholm's Tvärbanan bear Nils Kölare's touch - each station between Globen and Alvik clad in ceramic-tiled walls, each in its own dominant color, completed in 2000 near the end of his long career. It is perhaps the most visible sign of how seriously Sweden took abstract, geometrically ordered art as part of public life, and how central Kölare was to that project.
Born in Flen on 26 April 1930, Kölare moved toward art during Sweden's postwar cultural expansion. He trained at Konstfack in Stockholm from 1953 to 1957, then deepened his craft with mural painting studies at Högre Konstindustriella Skolan. The double education, in applied and monumental art, shaped his career: Kölare worked across scales, from intimate serigraphs to large public commissions. Beyond the Tvärbanan, he created wall paintings at Ljusgårdar in Huddinge Hospital, at Hagalunds School, and at Danderyd Hospital.
Critics placed him in the company of Swedish concretists and constructivists, but Kölare pushed back on the label. He called himself a landscape painter - an unusual self-description for an artist who worked almost entirely in geometry. The contradiction is instructive: his paintings and prints read as movement, tempo, and color chord rather than pure formal exercise. He described his interest as lying in "rörelser och riktningar, tempoväxlingar och färgackord" - movements and directions, tempo changes and color chords. The landscapes were inner ones, abstracted.
His silkscreen prints were produced through Atelier Landberg, a printmaking studio whose technical standards suited the precision his work demanded. He exhibited internationally, including at the Saga-Salon de l'estampe et de l'edition d'art at the Grand Palais in Paris. His work entered the collections of Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, and regional museums in Norrköping, Eskilstuna, and Gävle. His gallery in Stockholm, Galleri Olsson, represented him for much of his active career, and the group Konstruktiv Tendens claimed him as one of their own.
Kölare died in March 2007. On the Auctionist platform, his works appear across Swedish auction houses, led by Stockholms Auktionsverk. Compositions in oil and serigraphs dominate what comes to market. His top recorded sale stands at around 4,000 SEK for a signed oil titled "Diagonal komposition", reflecting his market position as a serious mid-century figure whose work remains accessible to collectors.