ArtistSwedish
PG Thelander
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Pär Gunnar Thelander - known as PG Thelander - was born on 2 May 1936 in Stockholm. He grew up in a family with a strong interest in art and began painting during his school years. His formal training began at Konstfack (the University of Arts, Crafts and Design), where he studied decorative painting from 1955 to 1959, followed by five years at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts (Kungliga Konsthögskolan) from 1959 to 1964. A period of study in Paris in 1962 proved formative, and he has returned to the city regularly throughout his career.
Thelander works across three disciplines - painting, printmaking and sculpture - and shifts between them freely. His reputation rests most firmly on copper engraving, a technically demanding medium in which he has earned international standing. He has exhibited individually in Stockholm, Uppsala, Oslo and at Krognoshuset in Lund, and participated in group shows in Ljubljana, Lugano, Copenhagen, Tokyo and London, as well as in the Stockholm Salon at Liljevalchs Konsthall and the exhibitions of the Swedish Graphic Society.
His imagery is immediately recognisable: a cast of penguins, tortoises, ostriches and frogs mingles with unexpected domestic objects - nuts, screws, patches, potatoes - in compositions that carry an undercurrent of wit. From the 1970s onwards, a small, somewhat helpless human figure began appearing throughout his work, functioning as an alter ego. Thelander has described this figure as a paraphrase of Jean Dubuffet's portrait of the writer Henri Calet - an admission of vulnerability framed in irony.
The Aspudden metro station in Hägersten, Stockholm features his public art commission from 1987: colourful geometric enamelled reliefs on the platform walls and a distinctive penguin sculpture, extending his private visual language into public space. His work is held by Moderna Museet in Stockholm and by institutions in Paris, Dresden, Mexico City, New York and San Francisco.
Thelander's awards include prizes at the World Print Competition Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo (1966) and San Francisco (1973), at Graphica Creativa in Jyväskylä, Finland (1984), and at the Biennial of Prints in Bhopal (1991). On Auctionist, his 17 auction records span prints, ceramics and sculpture. The highest recorded sale in our index reaches 550 SEK, with most lots appearing at Bukowskis Stockholm and Bukowskis Malmö, confirming his strongest market presence at Sweden's major auction houses.