ArtistSwedish
Richard Björklund
2 active items
Richard Björklund was born on 1 August 1897 in Hyllie Parish, just outside Malmö, into a household where colour was a working material before it was an artistic one. His father was a master house painter in Limhamn, and Björklund trained in the same trade before deciding that painting walls was not what he wanted to do with paint. The transition from decorator to artist followed a path through formal schooling: Campbell's painting school in Lund, 1919 to 1920, then Paris.
Paris in 1921 meant the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Montparnasse, two schools at the heart of Montparnasse where models were available at low cost and the prevailing conversation was still shaped by what the Impressionists had done a generation earlier. Björklund absorbed that conversation deeply. He started working on small panels, trying to fix the light and atmosphere of the city in the same way Sisley or Pissarro had fixed the light of the Ile-de-France. He returned to Paris in 1924, producing red chalk studies that are documented in the Auctionist database with that year's date. He also traveled to Berlin in 1923, Italy in 1926, France again in 1928, Dalmatia from 1934 to 1935, and Italy once more in 1947. The travel was not tourism: each trip fed directly into the work, and subjects like a street in Settignano or a canal motif from one of these journeys appear in his auction record.
Back in Sweden, Björklund found his subjects in the Skane landscape he knew from childhood. Farmyards under snow, coastal cottages on Österlen, the Brantevik fishing harbour with its boats and changing weather: these motifs recur throughout his career. In the 1940s he worked around Malmö harbour with a more expressive handling, loosening the Impressionist touch toward something with greater structural weight. Works from 1941 and 1942, signed and dated, show him working across oil on panel and mixed media in this period.
His public recognition was substantial. Collections at the National Museum in Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Malmö Museum, Prince Eugen's Waldemarsudde, the County Museum in Kristianstad, Ystad Art Museum, Lund University Art Museum, and Gripsholm Castle all hold his work. He died on 19 June 1974 in Sankt Petri Parish, Malmö. He left most of his estate to the Aase and Richard Björklund Foundation, which has since funded scholarships for young Swedish art students.
On the Nordic auction market, 28 works appear in Auctionist's database, with 2 currently active. The work circulates across Swedish regional houses: Garpenhus Auktioner leads with 6 lots, followed by Markus Auktioner, Auctionet, Göteborgs Auktionsverk, and Höörs Auktionshall. The subjects confirm the geographic loyalties of his career, Brantevik harbour scenes, Skane farmyards in snow, a July moon over Brantevik, the harbour at Malmö dated 1942. The top recorded price in our database is 4,256 SEK for 'Fiskebåtar Brantevik', an oil on panel, placing him in the accessible segment of the secondary market for mid-century Swedish regionalists.