KunstenaarSwedish
Stig Blomberg
3 actieve items
Born in Linköping in 1901, Stig Blomberg trained at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm under sculptors including Carl Milles, before embarking on years of travel that shaped his mature vision. Between 1927 and 1930 he moved through Germany, France, Italy, North Africa and the United States, spending the longest stretch in Paris studying at the Maison Watteau. That passage through European modernism gave him a fluid sense of form, but he returned home with a distinctly personal interest: the human figure in motion, and above all the energy of children and young people caught at play.
By the 1930s Blomberg was already producing the work that would define his reputation. His relief sculpture 'Brottande pojkar' ('Wrestling Boys'), completed in 1933, earned him a bronze medal at the art competitions held alongside the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics - one of the few Swedes to win Olympic recognition for fine art. Bronze casts of that work entered the collections of Moderna Museet and the National Museum in Stockholm, anchoring his status among the leading figurative sculptors of his generation.
In 1936 he designed 'Fritidsflickan' ('The Leisure Girl'), a small bronze figure of a relaxed, self-possessed young woman that was first cast by the Ystad-Brons foundry. The work became one of the most reproduced Swedish sculptures of the mid-twentieth century, appearing in editions across several foundries including Herman Bergman Konstgjuteri in Stockholm. Its casual grace - the figure resting, one arm drawn back, entirely at ease with herself - captured something central to Blomberg's aesthetic: the idea that stillness can hold as much vitality as action.
Public commissions accumulated steadily across Sweden through the 1940s and 1950s. Blomberg's bronzes were placed on buildings, squares and institutional facades throughout the country, and his profile extended beyond sculpture into illustration. Under the pen name T. Arvidsson he drew cartoons and illustrations for Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's largest newspapers, demonstrating the same eye for physical character that animated his three-dimensional work.
In 1944 he was elected to the Academy of Arts, and in 1951 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Royal Institute of Art, a position he held until 1961. Those years of teaching coincided with the postwar expansion of public art in Sweden, and Blomberg occupied a central position in that effort. In 1956 he received the Prince Eugen Medal, the Swedish state's highest award for artistic achievement, presented by the king at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.
He died in 1970, leaving behind a body of work embedded in the Swedish urban landscape. On Auctionist, 38 works by Blomberg have been tracked across Swedish auction houses, with sculptures making up virtually all of the offerings. Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5 accounts for the largest share of appearances, followed by Auktionshuset Kolonn, Crafoord Auktioner Stockholm and Bukowskis. The highest recorded price on the platform is 23,000 EUR for a bronze of 'Fritidsflickan/Våren', with additional examples of that model selling in the 10,000-22,000 SEK range. 'Naturkraften', a numbered bronze from an edition of eight, and seated female figures in bronze have also appeared, typically selling between 4,600 and 6,000 SEK.