ArtistDanish-Swedish
Thormod Larsen
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Thormod Larsen was born in Copenhagen on 28 January 1921. His early training came at Tekniske Skolen in the Danish capital, where he developed a practical grounding in drawing and craft that would underpin his later work in intaglio printmaking. His life changed abruptly in 1941 when his activities as a resistance fighter during the Nazi occupation of Denmark placed him on the Gestapo's death list. He fled across the Øresund to Helsingborg that same year and settled in Sweden, a country that would remain his home for the rest of his life.
In Helsingborg he re-established himself as an artist, and in the years following the war he pursued advanced training in Paris with Johnny Friedlaender, the Franco-German graphic artist who became one of the key figures in the revival of colour etching in postwar Europe. The time with Friedlaender proved decisive. Larsen returned to Helsingborg with a thorough command of copper plate engraving and an understanding of colour printing that went well beyond what most Swedish artists of the period possessed.
In the early 1950s he founded Atelje Larsen, a professional graphic workshop in Helsingborg. The atelier offered printing services to other artists as well as producing his own work, and it gradually became a gathering point for printmakers working in intaglio and colour lithography. Its contribution to the technical development of colour graphics in Sweden was substantial. Larsen was also a member of the artists' group Differenterna, a collective that brought together several painters and graphic artists working in Helsingborg in the 1950s and 1960s.
His own work sits in the tradition of non-objective graphic art, building compositions from layered colour fields, geometric tensions and the particular texture that copper plate and etching needle produce. The colour etchings and lithographs he made through the 1960s and into the 1970s have a controlled energy that reflects both Friedlaender's influence and Larsen's own woodcut background.
Larsen died on 23 March 1977 in Laröd, within Helsingborg municipality. After his death, his son Ole Larsen continued Atelje Larsen, which developed into one of the leading graphic workshops in the Nordic region. Thormod Larsen's work is held in the collections of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo, Helsingborg Museum, Kalmar Konstmuseum, Sundsvalls Museum and the Allen Art Museum in Ohio.
On Auctionist, Larsen's 20 auction lots are concentrated heavily at Helsingborgs Auktionskammare (10 lots), which is consistent with his deep ties to that city. Höganäs Auktionsverk, Auctionet and houses in the southern Swedish region account for the rest. Works trade primarily as signed colour etchings and lithographs, with titles typically listed as Komposition - the recurring designation for his abstract work. Prices have ranged from 300 to 400 SEK for these graphic works, reflecting a regional collector base and the relative availability of his printed editions.