Gunnar Norrman

After receiving an advanced degree in botany and training for a career as a concert pianist, Gunnar Norrman instead turned to printmaking. After only three months of training at the Royal Academy etching school in Stockholm his first work was exhibited. His subjects — trees, flowers, land- and sea-scapes are filled with a poetic silence conveying the oriental tradition of reverence and humility before nature. For sixty years Norrman worked primarily as a printmaker, creating more than 1000 lithographs and drypoints, and drawings.

Gunnar Norrmans’s choice of imagery relates ultimately to his
home in Lomma, Sweden’s southernmost region. The imagery demonstrates how the landscape is dominated by the water between Sweden and Denmark, which at Lomma is exceptionally shallow. In many prints the transition from land to water is hardly noticeable.

John Russell wrote in a review in the New York Times that "several of Norrman’s images could hang with drawings by Seurat and hold their own".

Since his earliest individual show at the Malmo Konstmuseum in 1942, Norrman has had numerous exhibitions in Europe, Japan and the United States. His work can be found in major museums throughout the United States and Europe, including, the Metropolitan Museum, the New York Public Library, the British Museum, London, and the National Museum,
Stockholm.

Portions of this biography are selected from Gunnar Norman: The Complete Graphic Works, 1941-2001, published by Fitch-Febvrel in 2005. The catalogue raisonné of Norrman's work is available.