Vintage landscape oil on panel by Ove Olson, 1960s

Ove Olson was born 4 October 1903 in Skabersjö parish, Malmöhus county, died 1975, was a Swedish-French painter. He was the son of the merchant Ola Olsson and Karolina Nilsson and from 1932 married to the lawyer Paulette le Breton. Olson studied art with Tage Hansson at the Scanian Painting School in Malmö but interrupted his studies and moved to Paris in 1929 where he studied with Henry de Waroquier, Othon Friesz and Charles Dufresne at the Académie Scandinave while working at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. The circle of friends in Paris included Albin Amelin and Sven Erixson. Separately, he debuted with an exhibition in Strasbourg in 1934 and earlier that year he participated in an exhibition at Malmö Town Hall. Olson participated regularly in the French salons and since 1932 was a member of the Salon d'Automne. When World War II broke out, Olson was one of five Swedes who voluntarily enlisted for France. He fought with his infantry regiment in the Ardennes, Meuse and Verdun. One of his war comrades, the Swede Harry Thorsén, described their experiences in several newspaper articles after the war. During the fighting, he was taken prisoner by the Germans and was forced to work on wall construction in Luchenwalde for two years. A leg injury he sustained resulted in a period of hospitalization where an anti-Nazi doctor managed to get him sent home to his family in France. After his time at the POW camp, his landscape paintings gained a lyrical feeling for the land itself that is not found in the earlier works. After the war, he was honored with the French War Cross and the Red Ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and later he was also awarded the Cultural Prize of the City of Paris. After the war, he exhibited separately several times in Paris and in Sweden he exhibited at Modern art in a home environment and in collective exhibitions with Skåne's art association. His art consists of landscape paintings from the outskirts of Paris, harbor views and floral still lifes. Olson is represented at the Modern Museum and the National Museum in Stockholm, the National Museum in Tours, the Institut Tessin in Paris, Malmö Museum, Helsingborg Museum, Kalmar Art Museum, Landskrona Museum, Ystad Art Museum and Kristianstad Museum. Reference : 263384