ArtistSwedish
Paul Holsby
5 active items
Paul Georg Holsby was born on 1 September 1921 in Norrtälje, a small coastal town north of Stockholm. His early training took him to Paris, where he studied under the French painter and theorist André Lhote between 1948 and 1951. Lhote was a key figure in post-Cubist pedagogy, and his influence shaped Holsby's approach to pictorial structure and the ordering of color within a composition.
In 1946, before his Paris studies, Holsby co-founded the artist group Skånsk treklöver together with Harry Roskvist and Gillis Sahlin. The group held joint exhibitions across Sweden and into Northern Europe, appearing in Helsingborg, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Örebro, Umeå, Amsterdam, Helsinki and Copenhagen. This collective activity gave Holsby an early platform and embedded him in the postwar Swedish art scene centered around Scania.
His first solo showing at the Spring Exhibition (Vårutställningen) at Vikingsberg in Helsingborg came in 1947. Over the following decades he exhibited consistently throughout Sweden, with about a dozen solo appearances in Paris starting in 1957, and further exhibitions in West Germany, the United States and Canada. The international reach was substantial for a Swedish regional artist of his generation.
Holsby worked primarily in oil painting and color lithography. His lithographs, many produced from the late 1950s onward, carry surrealist undertones alongside a vivid palette, combining figurative elements with dreamlike spatial arrangements. Works such as the colored lithographs Spansk dans and Yster lek, both from 1967, show his ease with large areas of saturated color structured by strong linear rhythms. His paintings ranged from figurative compositions to still lifes.
He was elected a member of Academia Italia in 1978 and received that institution's gold medal. In 1988 he was awarded the Premio Milano Artista dell'Anno. His work entered collections at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Kalmar Art Museum, Norrbottens Museum in Luleå, Eskilstuna Art Museum, Institut Tessin in Paris, the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Grafikens Hus in Mariefred. He died on 15 December 2007 in Höganäs, the Scanian town where he had long been rooted.
At auction his work appears most frequently at Helsingborgs Auktionskammare, which has handled 24 of the 60 lots recorded on Auctionist, reflecting his strong regional ties to Scania. Top results include 4,101 SEK for Flickan och fågeln and 1,966 EUR for a flower still life. Lithographs and paintings trade regularly at mid-range prices, with figurative and flower compositions drawing the steadiest bidding interest.