KunstenaarSwedish
Bengt Lindström
43 actieve items
Bengt Lindström painted faces that look as though they were carved from the earth itself, thick impasto ridges of cadmium red, cobalt blue, and chrome yellow piled onto canvas with palette knife and fingers, forming masks and shamanic figures drawn from the Sámi mythology of his childhood in northern Sweden. Born on 3 September 1925 in Storsjökapell, a remote village in Norrland, he grew up immersed in the landscapes and ethnic traditions of Sápmi. His father, a primary school teacher with a deep interest in Sámi culture, gave him a foundation that no art academy could replicate.
Lindström's formal training was international and eclectic. In 1944, he moved to Stockholm to study under Isaac Grünewald. Two years later, at the Art Institute of Chicago, he encountered Willem de Kooning's abstract expressionism, a pivotal moment that showed him paint could be sculptural, violent, physically present. In 1947, he settled in Paris and studied under André Lhote and Fernand Léger, absorbing the structural rigour of French modernism. But where many Scandinavian artists of his generation stayed within the orbit of School of Paris aesthetics, Lindström turned back to the mythology of his northern origins, fusing Parisian technique with Sámi spiritual imagery in paintings that hit the viewer with raw, unapologetic force.
From 1968, Lindström divided his time between a workshop in Savigny-sur-Orge outside Paris and an atelier in Sundsvall, maintaining a dual identity as both a French-based internationalist and a deeply rooted northerner. His distorted, contorted faces, neither portraits nor abstractions but something more primal, became his signature. The paint itself became sculptural material, applied in layers so thick that the surface of a Lindström canvas has physical relief, demanding to be seen from multiple angles. His palette, dominated by saturated primaries and secondaries, refuses subtlety in favour of impact.
Lindström's work is held by the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Gallery, Moderna Museet, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Reina Sofía Museum. Over 4,200 of his works have appeared at auction. He died on 29 January 2008 in Sundsvall, returning at the end to the northern Sweden that had shaped his art from the beginning.
On Auctionist, 529 Lindström lots are recorded, with paintings (94) and prints (58) forming the core alongside the broader art category (316). Stadsauktion Sundsvall dominates with 87 items, reflecting his deep connection to Norrland, followed by Garpenhus and Norrlands Auktionsverk. His top sale on the platform reached 101,171 EUR for "Tête de Montagnard," with other major works trading at 60,000 SEK and 60,000 EUR. For collectors of Nordic expressionism, Lindström stands alone: no other Swedish painter of his generation channelled indigenous mythology through such raw, physical painterly force.