Nils Möllerberg
Covered by droit de suite
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"Mor och barn" (Mother and child).
Signed Nils - Möllerberg. The motif conceived 1923. Bronze, green patina. Height 107 cm, length 72 cm, width 43 cm.
Provenance
From the Family of the artist.
Literature
Leo Swane, "Nils Möllerberg", SAK, 1959, the motif described at pp. 50 and. 53-54. Compare ill at p.52 (cat. no. 41, a smaller copy in bronze), and at p. 55 (cat. no. 42 a copy in marble), and Plate IV (marble).
"Skulptur i natur", SAK 1939, the same motif in marble ill. at full page.
More information
Nils Möllerberg, "Mother and Child"
Nils Möllerberg apprenticed with older artists, including in Copenhagen from the age of 16. Between 1919 and 1928, he lived in Paris, where he was influenced by artists such as Aristide Maillol and Auguste Rodin, a influence particularly evident in his nude female figures.
Nils Möllerberg, along with Johan Johansson, Emil Johanson-Thor, Tora Vega Holmström, and Ivar Johnsson, was part of the Southern Swedish modernist group "De tolv," active between 1924 and 1934. Together with Bror Hjorth, he ran a sculpture school in Stockholm for a few years in the 1930s, where he was also a member of the "Färg och Form" group.
Author Leo Swane mentions the composition in his book about the artist Nils Möllerberg: "In 1923, he began to model the approximately half-meter-high sketch of the kneeling mother holding her little girl close, both entirely naked. In the following year, he scaled it up to natural size." The author further describes how the artist worked on the composition throughout the summer and had it cast in mid-August. After that, Möllerberg traveled to the marble quarries in Saint-Béat in the Pyrenees, where he ordered a block and, over the next year, carved out the composition of Mother and Child in white marble.
Nils Möllerberg is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.