ArtistSwedish
Uno Svensson
8 active items
Born in Kallinge in southern Sweden in 1929, Uno Svensson came of age in a home that combined music and religion with a deep visual curiosity. As a child he copied Gustave Doré's bible illustrations obsessively, laying the groundwork for a lifelong preoccupation with the human figure. His formal training began at Skånska målarskolan in Malmö and continued at Essem-skolan between 1950 and 1955, years during which he entered the orbit of C.O. Hultén and the creative energy around Galerie Colibri. Hultén organized Svensson's first solo exhibition in 1957, the same year he debuted at Skånes konstförening.
The 1960s were decisive. Svensson's early abstract canvases - marked by fleshy, ambiguous forms - gave way to a body of work titled Anatomiska tecken, loosely translated as Anatomical Signs. The series brought him national attention and positioned him within the broader European current of figuration that ran parallel to abstraction throughout the decade. A trip through post-war Europe in 1949, taken by train with his brother, had long before planted seeds of unease about human destructiveness, and this tension surfaced in the anatomical work's charged, clinical imagery.
Paris became the second home. In the early 1970s Svensson held a residency at Cité des Arts, where he met his lifelong partner Parvaneh. The French capital gave him access to a different artistic milieu and a deepened engagement with printmaking. His first international solo show came at Florence Houston Brown's gallery in the Rue du Pré-aux-Clercs in 1966, establishing a foothold in the French art world that persisted for decades. In 1985 he was elected to the Académie Européenne in Paris.
His work entered public collections across Scandinavia and Europe: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Lunds universitets konstsamlingar, Kalmar konstmuseum, Norrköpings konstmuseum, Institut Tessin in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, and the Musée International Salvador Allende, as well as Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum in Denmark. Lunds Konsthall marked his career with a large retrospective in 1990, confirming the breadth and endurance of his output.
At Nordic auctions, Svensson's work appears most consistently at regional houses including Crafoord Auktioner Lund, Garpenhus Auktioner, and Ekenbergs. The 25 works recorded in the Auctionist database are almost entirely paintings and prints, with figurative compositions and lithographs from the late 1970s and early 1990s forming the core of what reaches the market. Price levels are modest, reflecting the regional auction character of his secondary market rather than the institutional weight of his museum representation.