ArtistSwedish
Nils Nilsson
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Born on October 2, 1901, in the Annedal district of Gothenburg, Nils Helge Reinhold Nilsson followed an unusual path into the visual arts. He initially trained as a chaser at the Technical Vocational School in Malmö (1918-1919) before a friendship with artist Tage Hansson redirected him toward painting. He studied at the Technical School in Lund under Fredrik Krebs (1920-1922) and then at Valand in Gothenburg (1922-1925). Further study took him to the Académie Scandinave in Paris under Per Krogh, and later back to Valand (1926-1927) under Tor Bjurström, as well as to academies in Copenhagen and Stockholm where he focused on mural painting and etching.
Nilsson belongs to the circle of painters known as the Gothenburg Colorists, a group that developed a distinctive approach to color, light, and figurative expression during the interwar decades. Among this generation he was notably the first to achieve wide recognition. His 1935 solo exhibition at the Swedish-French Art Gallery in Stockholm marked a clear breakthrough, bringing his figure compositions, interiors, nudes, and landscapes to a broader public. The work is warm in tone and direct in its attention to the human figure.
In 1938 he returned to Valand as a teacher and eventually served as director of its painting school from 1938 to 1947. This institutional role shaped a generation of Swedish painters without pulling him away from his own practice. In 1942 he represented Sweden at the Venice Biennale alongside Johan Johansson and Carl Kylberg. His monumental fresco work stands as a significant part of his output: the mural "The Dance" in a Gothenburg girls' school and the fresco "Play and Seriousness" in a Stockholm school, completed in the spring of 1949, which at 135 square meters ranks among the largest murals in the Nordic region. He died in Gothenburg on December 1, 1949.
His work is held in the collections of the Gothenburg Museum of Art, Moderna Museet, the National Museum in Stockholm, Kalmar Art Museum, Norrköping Art Museum, Bohusläns Museum, Malmö Museum, and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo.
On the auction market, Nilsson's output appears in two distinct categories: oil paintings and rölakan flat-weave textiles. Among the 17 lots tracked on Auctionist, paintings and carpets appear in roughly equal measure. His paintings have sold at Stockholms Auktionsverk Fine Art, Bukowskis, and Göteborgs Auktionsverk, with a top recorded price of 10,000 SEK for the work "Syende Kvinna" (Sewing Woman). Named rölakan carpets, including the pattern "Mårbacka", also appear regularly and reflect the broad decorative engagement that characterized his practice.