Born in Malmö in 1912, Max Walter Svanberg was a central figure of Nordic Surrealism and a founding member of the Swedish Imaginist group. Initially trained at decorative and private painting schools, his work emerged in the 1930s and quickly distinguished itself through a visionary language centered on metamorphosis, eroticism, and the female form. In the 1940s and 1950s, Svanberg’s work garnered institutional recognition in Sweden and led to his breakthrough in Paris, where André Breton invited him to exhibit at the Surrealist gallery À l’Étoile Scellée in 1955.
Svanberg’s graphic and painterly universe—filled with hybrid beings and botanical anatomies—gained widespread acclaim through his illustrations of Rimbaud’s Illuminations and his contributions to major Surrealist exhibitions in Paris, Milan, New York, and São Paulo. He received Sweden’s Prince Eugen Medal in 1965 and was awarded the French Légion d’Honneur in 1969. Svanberg’s work is held in the collections of the Moderna Museet, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and numerous other institutions. Until his death in 1994, he remained faithful to a poetic and solitary vision that continues to resonate in the history of 20th-century art
