Bror Marklund – Sculptor and scenographer F331

Bror Marklund's art has been described as eroticistic primitive, a raw pagan style mixed with medieval features, brutality, and the monumental as a consistent theme. In Marklunds words: "To create a beautiful thing, it never happened".

Marklund started as an ornament sculptor and student of Carl Milles and Nils Sjögren at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Between 1934 and 1936 he traveled in Italy and France and was strongly influenced by modernism. Marklund was particularly impressed by the work of Ossip Zadkine and Henri Laurens. Others who left traces in his art were Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore.

This themed auction includes variations and sketches for the public sculptures "Gestalt i storm" and "Jester". A detail from the bronze gates to SEB's office at Sergels Torg is included as well as a whole gallery of characters, cast in bronze, from the play Mäster Olof by August Strindberg at Dramaten 1972.

Bror Marklund created the scenography for Mäster Olof, which came to consist of three monumental blocks of stone stacked on top of each other, an image for the rising and falling directions of movement in the play. Marklund also designed the costumes for the cast consisting of nearly 30 actors.

"In order to penetrate Strindberg's world, I had to make all the figures in plaster. To be able to talk to them, understand them, touch them, and get close to them as individuals.” The figures were exhibited at Galleri Gummeson in 1972 and were later cast in bronze.