Olle Skagerfors

Olle Skagerfors is one of the leading figures in Gothenburg's 20th century art. In intense, revealing self-portraits in pencil, in strong still lifes and in expressive portraits of odd personalities, or of his wife Mona, he has given his drawings and canvases eternal life.
He can be said to belong to a Gothenburg tradition with the feeling and the total concentration as a characteristic. "To explain the invisible, it is necessary to observe the visible extremely carefully", he expressed it.

Olle Skagerfors' various self-portraits in pencil belong to a central part of "Skager's" art. These emotional self-portraits are coveted by both collectors and museums. Moderna Museet, for example, owns three of Olle Skagerfors' self-portraits in pencil and Magasin III owns four.

"I remember Dad sitting on the edge of the bed, with paper and pencil, while Beethoven thundered out of the speakers. The music excited him and from his memory they grew, the various portraits and self-portraits. There were looks and expressions he had studied carefully and never got tired of, whether it was his friends, one of the family dogs, his wife Mona or himself.

I saw him sharpen his pencil with a small knife. Slowly and methodically, he carved away the surrounding wood, until the pencil appeared and when the pin was long enough, he finished by cutting the outermost tip of the pen.
I thought that was strange.
"Why do you do that?" I asked. “The pen must not be too pointed. It will not be good then. ” Became the answer. The pencil was of quality No. 6B and a perfectly sharpened pencil had a fairly flat, not too long pin with a blunt tip.

He almost dug into the paper with the pen as a reluctant tool, to try to attract, or even force the essentials out of the depths of the paper. The art of drawing was an exploration for "Skager", which also meant that he was in constant dialogue with the motif. Actually, he never finished! The art of drawing was central, which is evident in everything he did. Even in oil painting, you can clearly see the interplay between lines, stains and brushstrokes. ”

Excerpt from Olle Skagerfors' exhibition catalog 2016, text by the artist's daughter Anna Skagerfors