Carl Milles

Carl Milles
Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain

Sweden’s best-known sculptor.

Carl Milles created fountains and monuments in Sweden and the USA. Many of his works are gathered at Millesgården on Lidingö.

Carl Milles was born in 1875 in Vagnhärad in Södermanland, originally named Carl Andersson. He was apprenticed to a carpenter and studied at the Technical School in Stockholm. In 1897 he set off for Chile to work, but stayed in Paris. There he supported himself with various craft jobs and studied sculpture, and he came into contact with Rodin’s workshop.

In 1905 he married the Austrian painter Olga Granner. The following year they began building their home on Lidingö, Millesgården, which he went on extending throughout his life with terraces, stairways and sculptures.

Milles had his great breakthrough in Sweden in the 1910s and 1920s. He made the large statue of Gustav Vasa in the Nordic Museum and the Poseidon on Götaplatsen in Gothenburg, unveiled in 1931. The Orpheus Fountain in front of the Stockholm Concert Hall was completed in 1936. Over time his figures became ever more elongated and light, as if floating. He loved combining sculpture with water in fountains.

In 1931 he moved to the USA, where he taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan for twenty years. He became an American citizen in 1945 and carried out many fountains and monuments in American cities, among them Meeting of the Waters in St Louis.

He spent much of his last years in Rome. He died in 1955 at Millesgården. As early as 1936 he and Olga had donated the home to the Swedish people. Millesgården is now a museum and sculpture park, and Milles is regarded as Sweden’s most internationally famous sculptor.