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Robert Högfeldt
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The trolls in Robert Hogfeldt's paintings are not the menacing, boulder-hurling creatures of Scandinavian folklore. They are portly, bewildered, endearingly clumsy beings caught in situations that seem borrowed from bourgeois drawing rooms, playing chess, fetching Christmas trees, fumbling through social rituals they only half understand. Hogfeldt took the dark mythology of the Nordic forests and rewrote it as comedy, creating a visual universe that has been described as Disneyesque in its charm but distinctly Swedish in its deadpan humour. Born on 13 February 1894 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, he was raised in Sweden and trained at the Stockholm Academy of Art from 1913 to 1917, with additional study periods in Dusseldorf and Paris.
Hogfeldt built a career that straddled fine art and commercial illustration with equal distinction. His primary medium was watercolour, in which he excelled at rendering his fantastical subjects with a looseness and warmth that gave even the most absurd scenes a sense of lived-in familiarity. He also worked in oil, gouache, mixed media, and lithography, bringing the same playful sensibility to each. His published works became touchstones of Swedish illustrated books: "En Hogfeldtbok" (1937), issued by Norstedt, collected thirty-six colour reproductions; "Djur och odjur" (1942) showcased his animal and creature imagery; and his illustrations for a Swedish edition of "Gulliver's Travels" (1947) demonstrated his ability to match his wit to an existing literary text. He also illustrated Maria Olofsson's children's book "Pa trollkalas" (At the Troll Party), a title that could serve as a description of his entire oeuvre.
Beyond the trolls and gnomes, Hogfeldt was a capable portraitist and genre painter. Works like "Konstnaren och modellen" (The Artist and the Model) reveal a draughtsman who could handle the human figure with the same confidence he brought to his folkloric subjects. His long life, he died on 5 June 1986 in Djursholm at ninety-two, gave him a career spanning seven decades, from the tail end of Swedish National Romanticism through modernism and into the contemporary era. His work is held by Moderna Museet, the Nationalmuseum, and Norrkopings Konstmuseum.
On Auctionist, 129 Hogfeldt lots are recorded across a wide spread of Swedish auction houses including Metropol, Crafoord Lund, Stockholms Auktionsverk, and Boras Auktionshall. Paintings dominate overwhelmingly, with watercolours and oils making up the core offering. Top results have reached 6,559 SEK for "Julgranshämtning" in mixed media, with portraits and genre scenes typically trading in the 3,000-5,400 SEK range. His work remains an affordable pleasure for collectors who appreciate illustration as an art form and Swedish humour at its driest.