KunstenaarSwedish
Carl Michael Lundberg
1 actieve items
Carl Michael Lundberg paints almost exclusively from the territory closest to him - the studio table, the room next door, the waiting area at Fagersta's small railway station - and the constraint is entirely deliberate. Since the early 2000s he has lived in Karbenning, a village outside Norberg in Västmanland, a region of former ironworks and mining communities, and the social landscape of that post-industrial environment runs through his work as consistently as any motif.
Born in Stockholm in 1972, Lundberg trained at Idun Lovéns konstskola in 1995-1996 before completing an MFA at Kungliga Konsthögskolan (the Royal Institute of Arts) in Stockholm between 1996 and 2001. The move from Stockholm to Karbenning after his studies was a considered one - a self-chosen exile, as it has been described - and it has given his practice both its subject matter and its pace. He works on a painting intensively for a period, then sets it aside for months or even a year before returning to it, a method that produces works with a layered quality of attention.
His primary medium is gouache on panel, a combination that suits the matte, interior light that characterizes his compositions. The surfaces are worked carefully, with a flatness that is less naive than it is structural - recalling the compressed pictorial space of Albertus Pictor's medieval church paintings, or the matter-of-fact domestic observation in Nordic painting traditions. Works such as "Stilleben" (2021) and "Korsfästelse" (2020-21) show how he moves between the devotional and the everyday within the same visual language. A painting titled "Palme" - a gouache referencing Olof Palme - suggests the socio-political layer that runs beneath surfaces otherwise read as quiet interior scenes.
Lundberg has placed his work in conversation with an extended lineage of narrative-based image-making, from medieval church decoration through Diego Rivera's murals to Faith Ringgold's observations of community. The connection is not stylistic imitation but a shared commitment to painting as social documentation. His works can be read as a project of recording - what a particular community looks like during a period of decline and privatization, witnessed from inside it.
He has exhibited at Färgfabriken and Botkyrka Konsthall in Stockholm, as well as at Galleri Niklas Belenius and in shows connected to Konstakademien. He has also published work through the Styx imprint. His output includes miniature painting alongside standard panel works, and occasional works in pencil and Indian ink.
On Auctionist, all 30 catalogued items are classified as paintings, reflecting the dominance of his panel work in the secondary market. Sales have appeared almost entirely at Stockholms Auktionsverk Sickla (27 of 30 lots), with occasional appearances at Crafoord Auktioner Stockholm and Bukowskis Västberga. Prices to date are modest - the highest recorded sale is 1,300 SEK for the gouache "Palme", with other works reaching 1,000 SEK - placing him in the range of emerging mid-career Swedish painters whose market is still developing.