KunstenaarFinnish-Swedish
Timo Solin
2 actieve items
Timo Artturi Solin was born on December 7, 1947, in Tampere, Finland, into a textile worker's family. He came to art without formal training, approaching it first through painting and poetry in the 1960s before gradually shifting toward three-dimensional work. In 1975 he moved to Stockholm, a city that would become his permanent base and the staging ground for a career that grew steadily international.
His early sculptures were carved from wood and showed the influence of Henry Moore - rounded, weighty forms in which the human body became something elemental. He also cast in bronze during this period. Then, around 1985, Solin discovered sheet metal. The switch changed everything. Working with flat steel plate that he cuts, bends, and paints, he found a way to render the body in motion - not modeled in the round but constructed from planes and angles, assembled from pieces of painted surface. The result is sculpture that retains something of drawing: line, silhouette, color applied directly to metal.
The subject that has occupied Solin consistently is the female figure. His women run, stretch, balance, stand in wind. They are rendered in a language that is partly abstract - simplified, sometimes flattened - but never loses the physical charge of a body in space. A recurring motif is long hair rendered in reds and oranges, sweeping outward as if caught mid-movement. Titles like "Amazon" and "Springande kvinna" (Running Woman) are characteristic: these are not portraits but archetypes, figures defined by energy rather than identity.
His first solo exhibition was held at Gallery Aix in Stockholm in 1982. Subsequent years brought shows across Europe, in North America, and in Japan. Sculptures by Solin have been installed in public spaces including Rottneros sculpture park in Värmland and, in Tokyo, a work called "Sunbather" that stands permanently in the Marunouchi district. In 1992 he received the Ueno Royal Museum Prize at the fourth Rodin Prize Exhibition held at the Hakone and Utsugushi-ga-hara Open-Air Museums in Japan - a competition that brought international sculptors to one of the world's most significant outdoor sculpture venues.
Solin has also written poetry throughout his career, and the lyrical dimension of his work is not incidental. There is something song-like in the repetition of his chosen subject - the female body returned to again and again, each piece a new attempt at the same questions of movement, grace, and force.
At auction, Solin's work appears regularly across Scandinavia, with 43 recorded lots to date. Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5 and Bukowskis in Stockholm account for the largest share of sales, with additional results from Bukowskis Helsinki and Bukowskis Malmö. The majority of lots are sculptures - wall-mounted and freestanding - with paintings and prints appearing occasionally. Top results include a wall sculpture of a woman in metal reaching SEK 27,000 and a patinated running woman at SEK 24,000. The auction record stands at 110,000 USD achieved at Bukowskis Stockholm in 2018.