Roger Bissière

Arild Wahlström was a Norwegian industrialist and CEO, later chairman of Sande Tresliperi A/S and Sande Paper Mill A/S. Besides business and sports, Wahlström had a great interest in art and art collecting, which he shared with his wife Aasta. In their home in Holmenkollen, the couple built an extensive collection of major Norwegian and international works. Wahlström traveled extensively and often combined his travels with visits to galleries and artists. He developed close relationships with several artists and met Poliakoff, Henry Moore, Soulanges, Manessier, Singier, and many others. He was invited three times to visit Picasso in southern France with the gallery owner Kahnweiler, but each time, business got in the way, which was a great disappointment. Wahlström's great interest in Picasso's graphics was sparked after the war, during a business trip to Paris in 1946. In a small side street, the Wahlström couple discovered a picture of a woman's head in an art gallery. "It was so beautiful - we were both taken with it immediately. It was something extraordinary." The incident led to intensive collecting and resulted in one of the world's largest private collections of Picasso graphics, with over 1,000 graphic prints. In 1982, Arild Wahlström donated nearly 500 of these prints, including the entire Vollard suite, to the National Gallery in Oslo.