Poster, Tora Vega Holmström, Boy with a Shell

Dimensions 50 x 70 cm

Tora Vega Holmström, Boy with a Shell, 1918

Tora Vega Holmström is one of the important Swedish modernists of the early 20th century. Her work is characterized by a search between different painting styles. She was born in Skåne, where her base remained, but she traveled a lot - to Germany, France, Finland and Algeria. During the first half of the 1910s, Tora Vega Holmström painted with strong colors in a mosaic-like style. Towards the end of the decade, she switched to a lighter color scheme and a more subtle expression. She painted Boy with a Shell in different versions in 1918, during a stay in Vindeln, Västerbotten. The war years may have had an impact, by triggering a longing for eternal values. The shell can be seen as something mysterious, a symbol of infinity and eternity. In the paintings from this period, a kinship with Italian fresco painting emerges, which Holmström had studied in Florence in 1910.

Item no.: MOM117

©Tora Vega Holmström/ Image copyright 2021