artist: Gustaf Georg Walles (Swedish 1892-1972)
medium: oil on canvas
dimensions: 31 x 21 cm art size / 37 1/2 x 27 1/2 cm frame (approx)
signed
circa 1950s
presented in its original frame
AU $840 (approx US $565 / 515 EUROS / 82,000 yen / 440 GBP - for exact current conversion visit xe.com)
artist biography
Gustaf Georg Walles was born May 8, 1892 in Sundsvall. He was a Swedish painter and draftsman.
Walles trained as both a decorative painter and fine artist. The later he studied at at Sundsvalls stads skolor för yrkesundervisning. He became a journeyman painter in 1919 and master of decorative painting in 1924. He undertook many private study trips including Germany (1922, 1927, 1938), Italy and Switzerland (1927), Bornholm (1947), Iceland (1949), Portugal (1950) and to Spain (1953). He worked during the 1920s as a decorative painter in Gothenburg and Stockholm before being employed as a teacher of art industrial technical drawing and technical painting at Sundsvall stads skolor.
He exhibited in solo and group exhibitions. His debut solo exhibition was in 1948 at Konstsalong Rålambshof in Stockholm. Art critic M. Strömberg wrote about it in the newspaper Stockholm Tidningen (Stockholm Times):
“(Walles) is a nice and fashionable gen artist with a personal brushstroke. In his still lifes and landscapes from Härjedalen and Bornholm he works with one light stylisation of reality, which is closest linked to mosaic cubism. It is a species, which demands a strong sense of colour and light in its practitioners. Walles conveys them. He socialises with particular delicacy with pink, grey and emerald green tones.”
Art writer S. Lövgren wrote in the 10 February, 1958 issue of Morgon-Tidningen (the Swedish Morning Times newspaper):
“Even at an advanced age, Walles has not stopped up but seeks to with constantly fresh cues to interpret changing form and light experiences in the landscape, never ceasing to fascinate him. His pictures from Spain and Portugal are often beautiful disposed and clear minded. The strongest ones have verve and spontaneity, and the harsh grey-green colour scale determines the rash of colouristic sensibility.”
Solo exhibitions include Konstsalong Rälambshof in Stockholm in 1948 and 1951, Galerie Æsthetica in Stockholm in 1959, in Sundsvall in 1942, 1943, 1946, 1949 and 1950. He exhibited alongside Sune Blomqvist and Sven-Erik Wästerberg in Sundsvall in 1952, 1957, 1962, 1963 and 1966.
Select group shows he exhibited include numerous shows in his hometown of Sundsvall, a 1939 show of Swedish artists held in Finland, theVästernorrländsk Konst (Western Norrland Art) which showed in multiple cities (Sundsvall, Härnösand, Örnsköldsvik and Kramfors) in 1960, and at the Stockholmssalongen held at in Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm in 1962.
He painted figurative works, still lifes and landscapes and worked in many mediums including oil, tempera, gouache, watercolour or wax chalk. Walles also produced some public art pieces including a fresco painting in 1930 for the Sundsvall Craft Association, a wall mural for Swedish Army’s Air Defence Regiment in 1945, and several murals for the City of Sundsvall. He is represented in numerous collections including the permanent collection of the Sundsvall Museum.
Walles passed away at the age of 79 in Sundsvall on January 10, 1972.