artist: Bengt Orup (Swedish 1916-1996)
medium: oil on panel
dimensions: 44 x 20 cm artwork size / 58 x 34 cm (framed size)
signed
circa 1960s
presented in its original frame
AU $1150 (approx US $755 / 645 EUROS / 111,500 yen / 560 GBP - for exact current conversion visit xe.com)
artist biography
Bengt Orup (1916–1996) was a Swedish painter, graphic artist, sculptor, and glass designer, and one of the leading figures in the Skåne avant-garde after the Second World War.
Born on January 30, 1916, in Lindesberg, Orup was the son of headmaster Birger Orup and Dagny Nilson. He married Teddi Flygare in 1939. Initially abandoning his secondary school studies to train as a commercial artist, he soon shifted toward painting and studied at Otte Sköld’s Painting School in Stockholm (1934–1935), which laid the foundation for his artistic career.
A formative stay in Paris from 1937 to 1938 was followed by numerous study trips abroad — including France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands — that exposed him to international modernism. He made his exhibition debut in 1941 with a solo show in Helsingborg, and soon became a provocative and experimental presence in the art scene of southern Sweden.
Orup’s early works, often landscapes and architectural motifs, were painted in a naïve, expressionist style with simplified forms and muted planes of colour. By the late 1940s, influenced by Paul Klee, his work moved toward abstraction, with stylised figures bound in networks of black linear ornament before developing into more purely geometric compositions. His paintings were characterised by bold colour contrasts or restrained palettes of black, grey, and white.
Finding easel painting too limited, Orup increasingly turned to decorative and architectural projects. He created mosaics, wall paintings, stucco decorations, and sculptural commissions for public spaces. From 1952 he served as artistic director at Johansfors Glasbruk in Småland, where he developed innovative glass designs and large-scale compositions, helping to define postwar Swedish glass art.
Orup was central to the renewal of Skåne’s art scene. Alongside Torsten Hult and Kaj Siesjö, he co-founded the group Grupp III, organizing exhibitions and publishing prints and writings. He exhibited widely in Sweden, including solo shows in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Helsingborg, and other cities, and internationally in Chicago, New York, Paris, Zurich, Sydney, and Philadelphia. He participated in the traveling exhibition Swedish Abstract in the United States (1955–56), further cementing his international reputation.
Bengt Orup is represented at, among others, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the National Museum, the Moderna Museet, and the Nordic Museum, all in Stockholm, Kalmar Art Museum, Örebro County Museum, Småland Museum, Helsingborg Museum, Västergötland Museum and Norrköping Art Museum, and the Tessin Institute in Paris, as well as in international collections such as the Gewerbemuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland.
Orup’s bold explorations across painting, sculpture, and glass established him as a pioneer of Swedish modernism and a key figure in 20th-century Scandinavian art.