Bengt Orup 1916-1996

Bengt Orup was born in Lindesberg on 13th October 1916. He was a Swedish artist, glass designer and a pioneer of Swedish post-war modernism.

Orup attended Otte Sköld's Painting School (Otte Skölds Målarskola) in Stockholm (1933-38) and Académie de la Grande Chaumiere and Académie Colarossi (1938). While in Paris, in 1938, he participated in an exhibition at the Institut Tessin. The Institut Tessin (also known as the Centre Culturel Suédois) is a museum in Paris dedicated to Franco-Swedish artistic exchanges that dates back to the seventeenth century.

Orup returned to Paris (and St. Paul de Vence) in 1946 and started to experimented with pure, geometric shapes. Art Concret was an Avant-garde group of artists formed in Paris in 1929 - championing a geometrical abstract art closely related to the aesthetics of Neo-plasticism. During the late 40's and early 50's, Orup created a series of l'art concret paintings which had refined geometric shapes and strong contrasts.

In 1950 Orup was awarded the Skåne Art Association Scholarship and (in 1952) became new artistic director of Johansfors Glasbruk (a Swedish glass maker founded in 1891) in Småland. Orup was artistic director there until 1968, when he was invited to serve as guest professor at the Royal College of Art in London. In 1969 he had a solo (glass) exhibition at the Greenwich Theatre Gallery.

Bengt Orup exhibited extensively throughout his life.

Examples of Orup’s work are held in the collections of Moderna Museet and Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; L'Institut Tessin, Paris; Småland Museum (Sweden's Museum of Glass); Muse Curtius, Liège; Tomelilla Art Collection and the Helsingborg, Kalmar, Landskrona, Malmo, Lund and Norrköping museums.

Bengt Orup died in Domsten in 1996, aged 80.

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Bengt Orup