Ola Billgren - A collection

Ola Billgren (1940-2001) was a Swedish artist who early on formulated and contemplated the connection between art as a language and reality. He has been described as both a theorist and a sensualist, and in his works, he managed to capture both historical and contemporary aspects in a single image. Billgren's art is characterized by duality and ambiguity, both in expression and content. His dreamlike presence is unmistakable, from his photorealistic works in the 1960s to the later romantic elements in his artistic career.

Born in Copenhagen in 1940, Billgren became one of the most significant artists of his generation in Scandinavia. Both of his parents were artists and provided him with early artistic education. Alongside painting, he worked with prints, film, photography, and stage design. He also regularly contributed art criticism to magazines and newspapers, playing a crucial role in elevating the level of discourse around art in Sweden throughout his life.

His groundbreaking photorealistic images from the 1960s featured everyday subjects distinguished by their unique lighting and tenderness. In the 1980s, he pursued two distinct directions: one in painting and one in photography. In his painting, he explored romantic nature abstractions, which represented a return to modernism's focus on color.

This themed auction includes watercolors, drawings, photographs, lithographs, and an oil painting by Ola Billgren, primarily from the 1970s. The collection comprises many personal portraits of his close friend, Sven Henrysson. Some of the lithographs are unsigned, but all originate from the same collection.

Ola Billgren's works are represented in several museums, including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Museum of Art, the Malmö Museum, the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Museum für Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte in Lübeck, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk. His works can also be found in the collections of Lund University and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.