Birger Simonsson

The Gothenburg modernist among the Young Ones.

Birger Simonsson was one of the Young Ones of 1909 and an important model for the Gothenburg Colourists.

Birger Simonsson was born in 1883. He trained at the Valand School of Art in Gothenburg, where Carl Wilhelmson was teaching. He then went to Paris and encountered the new French art, particularly Cézanne and the Fauves.

He was one of the artists who exhibited together as the Young Ones in Stockholm in 1909. The group wanted to break with National Romantic mood painting and bring the strong colours and simplified forms of French modernism to Sweden.

Simonsson’s subjects were mainly landscapes, often of the Bohuslän coast and archipelago. He built up his pictures with clear forms and powerful colours, but his painting also has a calm, reflective tone.

He later taught at the Valand School of Art and, together with Tor Bjurström, became an important model for the young artists who came to be known as the Gothenburg Colourists, among them Ivan Ivarson and Ragnar Sandberg. He encouraged them to trust colour and their own impressions.

Simonsson died in 1938. He is perhaps best remembered as an important link between the Young Ones and the Gothenburg Colourists and as a significant teacher in west Swedish art.

• The avant-garde
• De unga and the breakthrough of Modernism