Sigrid Hjertén (1885 - 1948)

Nationality

Sweden

Place of Birth

Sverige

Biography

Sigrid Hjertén was born in Sundsvall in 1885. Her mother died of tuberculosis only a few years later and the family moved around in Medelpad in the years that followed, before settling in Stockholm. Hjertén studied at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm in the early 1900s, and trained in drawing and textiles. In the early 1910s, she studied in Paris where she was greatly influenced by Expressionism and her teacher Henri Matisse. After this point she mainly dedicated herself to painting. During her lifetime, Hjertén’s art was mainly shown in joint exhibitions with her husband Isaac Grünewald, or in group exhibitions. Her paintings were frequently compared with Grünewald’s in the media and were often referred to as pale copies of his. Towards the end of her career, she made her major breakthrough with a one-woman show at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in 1936. Today Sigrid Hjertén is seen as a pioneer and one of the foremost Modernist artists in Sweden in the first decades of the twentieth century.