When Evert Lundquist emerged as a neo-expressionist in 1950, he had already been active for 30 years. He began in the spirit of the New Objectivity in the 1920s and the 1930s' expressionism, influenced by James Ensor. Art history giants like Rembrandt, Chardin, and van Gogh led him to a pastose painting style where lines, shapes, and colors are born simultaneously. He himself said, "I fumble until I reach the point where it reeks of heat." Lundquist portrays the humble, such as a spade, a light, a ladder, a tree, but often women as well. Subjects that gain intensity through strongly simplified forms, almost dissolved by masses of color.
Evert Lundquist, along with Staffan Hallström, Olle Nyman, Torsten Renqvist, Sixten Lundbom, and Roland Kempe, belonged to the Saltsjö-Duvnäs gruppen, one of the more significant artist collectives in Sweden. They became friends during their student days at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and lived in Saltsjö-Duvnäs for several years in the 1940s. They all enjoyed considerable success, especially Staffan Hallström and Olle Nyman, but most of all Evert Lundquist, who often had his work exhibited internationally.
Lundquist studied at Carl Wilhelmson's painting school in 1924. That same year, he visited the Académie Julian in Paris before continuing his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, studying under Gösta von Hennigs, Carl Wilhelmsson, and Albert Engström from 1925 to 1931. He himself became a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1960 to 1970.
After his studies, Lundquist began creating art in a more expressionist style with connections to Edvard Munch. With thickly applied paint, his works appear to be about spontaneous painting, but he painted slowly, waiting for the possibilities that would manifest in the image.
Through his visionary yet challengingly simple painting, Lundquist became one of the most significant artists of his generation. He represented Sweden at the São Paulo Biennial, where he won a prize, and was selected to participate in the Guggenheim International Award in New York in 1964 for the world's top 100 artists, as well as at the Dunn International at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Canada and the Tate Gallery in London. International museums acquired works by Evert Lundquist, and important international galleries wanted to exhibit his art, but he decided to withdraw from the international art market after a few years. From 1953, he lived and worked in a white-washed building near Drottningholm Palace. A few years before his death, he became completely blind but continued to paint until the end. The house is preserved as Evert Lundquist's studio museum.
The current work depicts a street sweeper, a motif that the artist returned to several times.
The work is an outstanding example of one of the solitary, evocative figures that emerged from Lundquist's brush towards the end of the 1940s and the 1950s.
Evert Lundquist is represented in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, Tate Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Norrköpings Konstmuseum, Malmö Museum, Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Kalmar konstmuseum, as well as museums in Umeå, Linköping, Eskilstuna, Värmland, and Västergötland. He has also created public art installations throughout Sweden. Moderna Museet has held several significant retrospective exhibitions of Evert Lundquist's art, the first one in 1974, which was highly acclaimed and celebrated.