ArtistSwedish
Philip Von Schantz
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Born in Norrköping in 1928, Philip von Schantz grew up to become one of Sweden's most distinctive postwar artists, a painter and printmaker whose meticulous still lifes of berries, fruits, and root vegetables earned him a devoted public following. His career spanned painting, graphic art, museum leadership, and arts education.
Von Schantz studied painting with Otte Sköld in Stockholm in 1950, then traveled to Paris in 1951 to work under André Lhote. Returning to Stockholm, he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under Hugo Ruhr until 1957.
In 1963, von Schantz was appointed Professor of Graphic Art at the Royal Academy, a position he held for a decade. He then served as director of Moderna Museet from 1973 to 1977. Later, he served as president of the Academy of Fine Arts from 1987 to 1993. Between 1990 and 1993, he was the diploma artist for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, illustrating Nobel Prize diplomas.
Von Schantz's artistic breakthrough came in the 1970s with his luminous still lifes of berries. Gooseberries, blueberries, strawberries, red currants, and black currants spill from old enamel buckets and white tin bowls, rendered with a crystalline realism that borders on trompe-l'oeil. In 1983, he received the Prince Eugen Medal. His works are held by MoMA in New York.
On the auction market, von Schantz appears regularly across major Swedish houses with 105 items tracked on Auctionist. His berry-motif lithographs remain the most frequently traded works. Notable sales include "Spann med röda vinbär" at 13,500 SEK and "Röda Vinbär" at 10,100 SEK.