Evert Lundquist

Evert Ernst Erland Olof Lundquist (17 July 1904 – 4 November 1994) was a Swedish painter and graphic artist. He was born in Stockholm, the son of a railway official, Ernst Lundquist and Olga Eugenia Maria Charlotta Lundquist (born Björck). Lundquist, byway of his mother's family, was a relative of famed singer Johanna Maria "Jenny" Lind and the painter Oscar Björck. He was the youngest of the three children; his brother Edvard was born in 1898 and sister Elsa in 1902. The family home was located in Stockholm at 9 Tegnérgatan. His early life has been described as middle class, proper and calm.

Lundquist had bouts of depression and illness which caused delays in his education. His depression was often exacerbated by the long and dark months of autumn in Sweden. Lundquist had experienced feelings of "gloom" as early as 1920. By 1929, he had entered into a rest home on the island of Lidingö to recuperate. Recurring depression, primarily during the autumn season, will become a reoccurring event in Lundquist's life. These personal adversities were generally unknown to the public as Lundquist created a public narrative that presented him in a style that he favored. His desire to obscure and hide the unpleasant and uncontrolled aspects of his life has led to suggestions of a parallel/corollary to his artwork.

He lived and worked in Saltsjö-Duvnäs, on the outskirts of Stockholm. Here during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Evert Lundquist along with his wife and fellow artist Ebba Reutercrona, joined artists Roland Kempe and Staffan Hallström in living together at Olle Nyman's family home in Saltsjö-Duvnäs. This grouping of artists began to be identified as the "Saltsjö-Duvnäs Group". The group was rather loosely based and followed no set ideology or philosophical premise. They were, however, centered on an exploration of the material nature of painting, "from the small perspective, with the point of departure in the poetry of rural everyday life."

In the first part of the 1980s, a gradual deterioration in Lundquist's vision began leading him to paint less. Lundquist used labels with very large text attached to his tubes of paint in order to facilitate his recognition of the colors they contained. This helped the artist to eliminate any errors in his work, which was of critical importance as his limited eyesight forced him to finish any painting in one single session. The last known paintings by Lundquist occurred in 1989–1990.

In 1984, Lundquist published his autobiography, From the Life of a Painter (in Swedish Ur ett Målarliv). The autobiography reaffirmed much of his personal "narrative" which Lundquist preferred to share publicly.

Evert Ernst Erland Olof Lundquist died on 4 November 1994 in Stockholm.