The Swanljung Art Collection

When the Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art opened in 2007, the art collection of Lars Swanljung (1944-2022), who is a dentist and one of the most significant art collectors in Finland today, was deposited in Vaasa. The Swanljung collection consists of more than 800 works and it is being increased by acquisitions. The collection focuses on Finnish and Nordic contemporary art.

Swanljung started collecting art in the 1980s. Among the first art purchases were works by American artists Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine from a pop art exhibition held in Helsinki. Besides pop art, the themes of his first art purchases were linked to Greece and classicism in general.

Besides Finnish contemporary art, the collection contains a representative selection of art from the other Nordic countries. The collection includes works by Swedish artists, such as Peter Frie, Ulf Rollof and Ernst Billgren. The Norwegian artists Olav Christopher Jensen, Per Maning and Anne Katrinè Dolven as well as Per Kirkeby from Denmark are contemporary artists of international renown.  Islandic art is also well represented in the collection.

Read more about the collection in the web publication Lars Swanljung – Collector and His Collection.