ArtistSwedish
Sven X-Et Erixson
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On paintings and prints, he signed simply "X:et" - and that signature, colon and all, tells you something about the man. Sven Leonard Erixson grew up in Tumba south of Stockholm, began his working life at fourteen as an apprentice decorative painter, and eventually built one of the most personal bodies of work in 20th-century Swedish art. The nickname stuck for life.
Born on 23 November 1899, Erixson studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and later taught drawing at Konstfack before the path circled back to the Academy, where he was appointed Professor of Painting in 1943, succeeding the towering Isaac Grünewald. He held the post until 1953. The appointment came after a decade in which his reputation had already solidified: by the end of the 1920s he had developed the spontaneous, emotionally direct manner that would define him. In 1932 he was among the founders of Färg och Form, an artist-run gallery in Stockholm that became a gathering point for Swedish modernism and a challenge to the institutional exhibition circuit.
His sources were wide-ranging: Swedish 1910s naivism, medieval church fresco painting, German Expressionists Nolde, Kokoschka, and Soutine, alongside Goya, Velázquez, and El Greco encountered on travels through Europe and Spain. What emerged was something that sat outside any single label - figurative but not academic, expressionistic but grounded in narrative warmth. He painted harbor workers, mothers, summer nights in the archipelago, market scenes. The colors were rich and unguarded; the drawing was quick and sure.
Public commissions came steadily. His frescoes "Liv-död-liv" and "Årstiderna" in the Holy Cross Chapel at Skogskyrkogården in Stockholm were completed between 1938 and 1940, the result of a competition won in 1937. In 1948-49 he painted the great fresco in Huddinge town hall, weaving in memories of the railroad town of his childhood. For the theater stage he designed sets and costumes for Federico Garcia Lorca's Blood Wedding in 1944. The world premiere of Karl-Birger Blomdahl's opera Aniara at the Royal Swedish Opera in 1959 also featured his scenography and costumes - a collaboration that matched his vivid visual language to one of the era's most ambitious musical works. He was awarded the Prince Eugen Medal in 1946.
The Xet Museum at Botkyrka Konsthall in Tumba now preserves his legacy, renovated in 2018. His work is held by Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, and Waldemarsudde, as well as collections abroad. On the Auctionist platform all 23 items appear through Metropol, almost entirely prints and graphic works, reflecting how his lithographs in particular reached a wide public. Top recorded sales run to 2,400 SEK, with prints frequently changing hands in the 350-500 SEK range.