ArtistSwedish
Pelle Åberg
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Per-Axel Åberg was born in Stockholm on 21 April 1909 into a family with deep roots in the visual trades. His grandfather Wilhelm Åberg was a theatrical scene painter; his father Axel Wilhelm Åberg was a working visual artist. Pelle - the name by which he was universally known - absorbed the craft early and spent twelve years painting alongside his father as a decorative painter. Formal studies at the Technical School in Stockholm ran from 1927 to 1929, supplemented by travel through Italy, France, England, and Spain that exposed him to European figurative painting firsthand.
From the decorating workshop, he moved into theatrical scene painting, spending three years at Södra Teatern and five at Scalateatern in Stockholm. The work suited him: he had a natural instinct for the theatrical image, for costumes and footlights and the heightened humanity of the stage. Those sensibilities never left his easel work. His paintings are full of women in elaborate hats, clowns caught between performance and exhaustion, figures from the bars and cafes of the Klara district - the old working-class neighborhood northwest of Stockholms Central that was demolished in the 1960s. Åberg painted it while it still stood, and his canvases serve partly as documentation of a vanished urban world.
His medium was almost exclusively oil, applied to panel or canvas with a direct, confident hand. The palette tends toward warm yellows and browns, punctuated by the red of a blouse or the white of a hat brim. Critics have described the approach as a folk art decorative style, but the phrase underdescribes the work: there is psychological attention in his best figure studies, particularly in the women's portraits, that goes beyond mere decoration.
He exhibited repeatedly at De Ungas salong and at Konstnärshuset in Stockholm, and took part in tours through provincial towns across Sweden. He became a founding participant in the Young Artists group from its formation in 1938. Public institutions acquired his work: Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Moderna Museet, Stockholms Stadsmuseum, Jönköpings länsmuseum, Norrköpings konstmuseum, Östergötlands museum, and the Ateneum in Helsinki all hold examples. Restaurant KB (Konstnärsbaren) in Stockholm retains his wall paintings. He died in Stockholm on 21 April 1964, on his fifty-fifth birthday.
Auction activity for Åberg is concentrated at the major Stockholm houses. Stockholms Auktionsverk accounts for the largest share of sales - over 19 lots handled through its Magasin 5 and Sickla rooms alone - followed by Bukowskis with 10 lots. Uppsala Auktionskammare and Göteborgs Auktionsverk have also handled his work. The auction record stands at approximately USD 14,411 for a cafe scene sold at Bukowskis in 2013. On Auctionist, the strongest recent results include 28,008 SEK for a motif from Klara and 16,600 SEK for a woman in a hat, both in oil on panel. Works in the 8,000-16,000 SEK range appear consistently at Swedish major houses, making his paintings accessible to collectors without being inexpensive.