Torsten Billman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetTorsten Billman
Swedish printmaker
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Kullavik, Halland County, Sweden
About Torsten Billman
- Torsten Edvard Billman (6 May 1909 – 6 April 1989) was a Swedish artist who worked as a printmaker, illustrator, and buon fresco painter.
- He counts as one of the 20th century's premier wood-engravers.The poet Gunnar Ekelöf wrote about Torsten Billman: "To those, who with the word art visualise large, magnificent, 'striking' canvases Torsten Billman doesn't have not much to offer.
- His art serves the simple, neglected, homeless of existence.
- It features the fellows from the Nippon and other ships, marked by the hard life in ports as well as on board.
- His art shows the interiors of East End bars, where you get acquainted with the dark side of life.
- His art however isn't any 'social' art of the arrogant, placarding character there was so much of especially during the 1920s and 30s.
- It's social, not in attitude or trend, but with objectivity and revealing sharpness in the human portrayal that sometimes seems almost brutal - repulsive, but sadly true.
- Yet it's, however always carried by compassion.
- Never by sentimentality.
- This involves a simple statement of: 'Such is man'.
- But from the ravaged features, and the gout-ridden limbs stiff from work there's still a notion emanating of how man should look like and could look like."
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