A graphite profile portrait drawing of a woman on paper by Johannes Collin (1873-1951), signed “Johannes Collin 98” and titled “Zigenerska”. This early and unusual work by Collin presents his interest in refined drawing and capturing character even at a modest scale. It dates from 1898, a formative moment for the artist when he was studying arts and stands out as a somewhat rare example of his graphic or drawing work rather than his better known small bronzes.
Johannes Collin was born in 1873 in Skåne, south Sweden.
After passing his matriculation at the Cathedral School in Lund in 1892, he studied at university in 1894–96 and then turned to art studies.
From 1899 to 1901 he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, and from 1903 to 1905 he studied sculpture in Paris.
Collin settled in Lund, Skåne and pursued a career as sculptor and poet. He died in 1951 in Lund.
He was the son of a farmer and raised in the Skåne countryside. Early on he developed a sensitivity to form, figure, and expression, combining his sculptural ambitions with literary leanings (he later published a small volume of poetry).
Collin appears to have had an individualistic personality: he moved in student and artistic circles in Lund, but also kept a modest, sometimes even eccentric public persona. In the mid-1930s, he increasingly turned to poetry and pared back his three-dimensional work.
From his early years, he gradually developed into a sculptor working in bronze and patinated materials. Much of his work consists of small‐scale bronzes with an intensity of expression. One critic (in Kulturens yearbook) wrote of Collin that “the monumental is not in the work’s external dimensions but in the attitude … your small sculptures have an inner monumentality”.
Collin exhibited his works in various venues: for example he took part in the Lund Exhibition (“Lundautställningen”) in 1907.
Internationally, he showed works in Munich in 1909 and 1913, where his efforts were positively reviewed.
A noteworthy retrospective or exhibition was held at the museum Kulturen in Lund, when a donation of Collin’s sculptures...
Category
1890s Other Art Style Frank Jameson Art
