Max Walter Svanberg, born in Malmö in 1912, played a major role in the history of Surrealist painting. At 17 he started to paint advertising posters in his hometown and then studied painting with Otto Sköld in 1933. A year later he was stricken with poliomyelitis and was forced to give up painting during a whole year.
In 1943 Svanberg produced his first imaginary drawings which were to lead him towards surrealism. He then settled in Stockholm in 1945 and became a co-founder of the «Imaginist» group, which he left in 1953.
Between 1946 and 1948 Svanberg was also a member of the «Minotaur» movement while his first one-man exhibition took place in Stockholm in 1945 but his works were rejected by the public because of their deep erotic innuendoes.
André Breton and his Surrealist friends discovered his paintings during an exhibition in Paris in 1953 and Svanberg was then encouraged to illustrate the «Medium3» magazine in which Breton paid tribute to his works.
In 1955, Breton presided over his first one-man exhibition in Paris and hailed his surrealist vision and strength. Svanberg took part in many international exhibitions and illustrated a Swedish version of Rimbaud's «Illuminations» and created as well as bestiary universe confusing women, birds and stars in an undetermined space. Certain of his works were like pearl mosaics or embroideries, notably «Portrait of Star 3», which was shown at the International exhibition of Surrealism in 1959 in Paris. Svanberg died in 1994.
Some of his works were acquired by the museums of Norköping and Stockholm.
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