Henri Paul Sert was born in La Réunion off the coast of Africa but moved to Sweden in 1958 at the initiative of a group of patrons. He first settled in Hven and later in Malmö, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. Although he exhibited in Copenhagen, Borgholm, and Oslo, he never managed to establish himself as an artist in a larger circle, and in 1964 he passed away, only 26 years old, in Stockholm. The same year, a memorial exhibition was held at Gummeson’s art gallery, about which the art critic Marianne Nanne-Bråhammar wrote, among other things: "Sert [is] never a follower. There is always a certain poetic tone that is his own. It has no foreign accent; one wants to believe that he has found the Nordic blue tone and the living light by the shore of Ven."