Artist
Gustav
Hjelmgren
Swedish painter, born 1979. Lives and works in Gustavsberg, Sweden.
In My Own Words
I paint because it is the only place where I get to be fully present and fully unguarded at once. Painting is how I think; it is also how I rest.
My background as a nurse taught me to pay attention — to read a room, a face, a small change in breath. That same attention is what I bring to a canvas. I want the work to slow people down, the way a long conversation does. To offer a moment of maitri — friendliness, warmth, non-harm — in a world that rarely asks us to stop.
I am drawn to repetition, to colour as feeling, and to the small accidents that arrive when you stay with the work long enough. I keep painting because I am still curious — and because I believe a quiet image, made with care, can hold a great deal.
— Gustav Hjelmgren
Biography
Gustav Hjelmgren (b. 1979, Sweden) is a painter based in Gustavsberg. He works between large oil paintings and smaller studio studies, and returns to repetition, slow accumulation and the act of looking.
He grew up in a family of painters — his great-great grandfather was the painter Richard Bergh, and his grandmother painted her whole life. Self-taught, and trained as a nurse, he brings that attention to people into the work.
His recent body of work, Maitri, takes its title from the Sanskrit term for loving-kindness: an active attitude of warmth, empathy and non-harm toward oneself and others. The paintings extend this temperament into form: soft, undulating, slippery shapes that nestle together, never agitated, never frantic — a quiet counterforce to the unrest and hardships of the world.
The Maitri paintings are made on the floor, often several at once, with oil paint applied through hands, sponges and large brushes — a process that is physical, direct and responsive, balancing accident and intent. The newest paintings, taking shape in the studio now, push this further still — painted almost entirely with the hands, the body itself becoming the instrument.
He paints intuitively and rarely begins with a plan. The work arrives in clusters, and what those clusters are about tends to reveal itself only later.
His work was included in My My, Hey Hey at Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (2025), and he has shown at Larsen / Warner (2026), Blugiallo Tvåtrappor (2025), Galleri Torekov (2023) and Galleri Duerr (2016–2021). He recently completed a permanent wall mural for Scandic Malmen, Stockholm.
CV
Solo Exhibitions
- 2026MaitriLarsen / Warner, Stockholm
- 2025Dalmatin — The Art Bystander Exhibition No.3Blugiallo Tvåtrappor, Stockholm · Curated by Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar
- 2023Fri HandGalleri Torekov
- 2021Solo ExhibitionGalleri Blå, Linköping
- 2019Abstract LayersGalleri Duerr, Stockholm
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2025My My, Hey HeyEric Firestone Gallery, New York
Public Commissions
- 2025Mural — permanent commissionScandic Malmen, Stockholm
Lives & Works
Gustavsberg, Sweden