Esaias Thorén

The Surrealist of the Halmstad Group.

Esaias Thorén painted dreamlike Surrealist landscapes and later moved towards abstraction.

Esaias Thorén was born in 1901 and was one of the six founders of the Halmstad Group in 1929, together with the brothers Erik and Axel Olson, among others. The group wanted to bring international modernism into Swedish art, and it held together for more than fifty years.

Like the others in the group, Thorén began with pictures marked by Cubism and Constructivism. In the 1930s he became one of the most poetic of the group's Surrealists. His landscapes are dreamlike, with strange objects and figures in desolate spaces, often in a soft, almost unreal light. The beaches and plains of Halland can be glimpsed behind the fantastical scenes.

After the war he moved gradually towards a freer and more abstract painting, in which colour and texture became more important than narrative. He remained active in the group throughout its existence.

Thorén died in 1981. His works are in the Mjellby Art Museum outside Halmstad, which is devoted to the art of the Halmstad Group, among other collections. He is counted among the quieter but distinctive voices of Swedish Surrealism.

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