Leander Engström

The modernist of Lapland.

Leander Engström painted the mountains and motifs from Lapland in large, richly coloured areas. He was one of the Young Ones.

Leander Engström was born in 1886 in Ytterhogdal in Hälsingland and grew up in Norrland. He studied at the Artists’ Association school in Stockholm and in 1908 went to Paris, where he became a pupil at the Académie Matisse.

The encounter with Matisse and French colour painting proved decisive. On his return home he was one of the artists who exhibited together as the Young Ones and who brought modernism to Sweden.

Engström became known above all for his pictures of Lapland and the mountains. He painted mountains, lakes and the midnight sun and depicted the life of the Sámi. He simplified the landscape into large, decorative areas of colour and powerful outlines. The pictures convey both the grandeur of nature and a bright, almost festive delight in colour.

He also made monumental paintings and in the 1920s produced a number of pictures from travels in Italy, where the light and landscape gave him new subjects.

Engström died in 1927, only about 40 years old. He is regarded as one of the most important artists among the Young Ones and as the one who gave the mountains a place in Swedish modernism.

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