Ragnar Sandberg

The playful Gothenburg Colourist.

Ragnar Sandberg painted playful pictures of the west coast: ball games, football and bathers.

Ragnar Sandberg was born in Gothenburg in 1902 and studied at the Valand School of Art under Tor Bjurström. He became one of the central figures in the group later known as the Gothenburg Colourists, who from the 1930s worked with luminous, almost transparent colours and a bright, lyrical style of painting.

Sandberg's subjects nevertheless differ from the others'. He liked to paint people in motion, especially ball games, football on grass pitches, children at play and bathers on the west coast. The pictures are playful and almost naïve, with small figures moving freely across the canvas. He worked with large, bright areas of colour and a light touch.

He also painted harbours, boats and archipelago landscapes in Bohuslän. Over time his painting became freer and more abstract, with colour and rhythm taking over from narrative, but the joy in his pictures remained.

Sandberg was also a valued teacher and influenced several generations of young painters. He died in 1972. Today he is counted among the most personal of the Gothenburg Colourists, and his football pictures are among the best-known sporting subjects in Swedish art. His works are in the Gothenburg Museum of Art and the Moderna Museet, among other collections.

• The interwar years
• The 1930s: colourists and Surrealists