Torsten Billman

Torsten Edvard Billman (6 May 1909 – 6 April 1989) was a Swedish artist who primarily worked as a graphic artist, book illustrator, and buon fresco painter. Additionally, he is counted as one of the 20th century's premier woodcut engravers.

The poet Gunnar Ekelöf wrote about Torsten Billman: "To those, who with the word art visualise large, magnificent, 'striking' canvases Torsten Billman doesn't have not much to offer. His art serves the simple, neglected, homeless of existence. It features the fellows from the Nippon and other ships, marked by the hard life in ports as well as on board. His art shows the interiors of East End bars, where you get acquainted with the dark side of life. His art however isn't any 'social' art of the arrogant, placarding character there was so much of especially during the 1920's and 30's. It's social, not in attitude or trend, but with objectivity and revealing sharpness in the human portrayal that sometimes seems almost brutal - repulsive, but sadly true. Yet it's, however always carried by compassion. Never by sentimentality. This involves a simple statement of: 'Such is man'. But from the ravaged features, and the gout-ridden limbs stiff from work there's still a notion emanating of how man should look like and could look like."

Born in Kullavik, Sweden, Torsten Billman disliked school, with the drawing lessons as the only exception. During a drawing lesson with a substitute teacher Torsten had on a piece of blotting paper drawn a detailed composition, which was supposed to represent an Indian with his tent and utensils. "After the teacher had inspected the pictures produced by the class, Torsten was called to his desk. He expected a sympathetic judgment from the teacher; yes, he also hoped that he might impress a certain girl in the class. So he stepped forward fearlessly. He had hardly reached the plattform when he received such a box on the ear that he fell to the floor. As he crestfallen rose to return to his own desk he was further rebuked by the teacher, who ordered him immediately to fling the drawing in the red-hot stove." "It was my first vernissage", said Torsten Billman.

The father, Frans Ludwig Billman (1862–1930), was born in Berg' parish near Billingen. Here Torsten Billman's grandfather had worn himself out in the hell of a crofter's holding. Torsten's mother Maria (1870–1953), born Hultgren, came from Skövde. Both parents had grown up under very poor conditions in Västergötland. Frans Billman's great talent for tailoring allowed him, despite only 14 days of elementary school, go to Copenhagen and London to train himself to become a fine tailor. In the 1890s Frans and Maria moved to workingclass suburb Haga, Gothenburg. 1909 they moved, with their three-year-old daughter Ingegerd (b. 1906), to Kullavik (south of Gothenburg). In Kullavik Frans Billman opened his own tailor shop. Frans wished that Torsten also should become a tailor; so Torsten's artistic interest lay dormant after he finished school in 1924. Torsten also understood that the father got fewer and fewer customers, as more and more hand-tailors in the mid-1920s were knocked out by the expanding clothing industry. So for good reasons Torsten had no desire to become a tailor - he longed out, away! What he looked for was both freedom and contact with human beings, work communion.

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