Leander Engström

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Per Leander Engström (born February 27, 1886 in Ytterhogdal , † February 6, 1927 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish painter .

Engström attended elementary school in Ljustorp and came to Sundsvall with his parents , where he worked in a sawmill at the age of 14. In 1901 he became an assistant in the daily newspaper "Sundsvall Tydning" and member of a group of amateur artists around the painter Helmer Osslund. He accompanied Osslund on a mountain hike.

Thanks to the support of Karl Nordström , Leander Engström studied painting from 1907 to 1908 in Stockholm at the art school of the artists' association. He then continued his studies from 1909 to 1910 with Henri Matisse in Paris . He founded an artist group of young Swedish and Norwegian students Matisse.

Matisse and his students at the Académie Matisse , Paris, 1909.

Engström brought colorful French painting to Sweden . He spent a significant part of his life in the mountains and forests of Norrland in the north of the country. He often visited the village of Abisko , where he built a house in 1916.

In the early 1920s he visited Italy several times , where he found new inspiration from the painting of the Italian Renaissance .

Engström mainly created landscapes and portraits. At the same time he made several ceiling paintings in the Skandia Theater in Stockholm.

The influence of Paul Gauguin , Vincent van Gogh , Paul Cézanne and later also Matisse is noticeable in Engström's works .

Leander Engström married Mary Edlund in 1913. Her twin sons Kjell Leander Engström (1914–1979) and Tord Leander Engström (1914–1985) were also artists. Leander Engström died at the age of 41 and was buried in the Forest Cemetery in Stockholm.

literature

• Vollmer 1953-1962, Vol. 2, pp. 41-42
• Witt Checklist 1978, p. 91
• Bénézit 1999, Vol. 5, pp. 132-133
• Saur 1992, 33, 116-117 (2002)

Web links

Commons : Leander Engström  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Svenskt Biografisk Lexicon