Description
Inge Schiöler was a Swedish painter and illustrator who worked predominantly in oil and pastel. He was notably part of a group of artists known as the Göteborgskoloristerna (Gothenburg colorists).
Schiöler initially studied art at the Slöjdföreningen in Gothenburg, before enrolling to study painting at Valands konstskola. He made his debut as a painter in May 1930 at a group exhibition at the Swedish-French Art Gallery in Stockholm, where Gösta Olson was director. In October 1930, Schiöler traveled to Paris to study art. Some of Schiöler’s Valand comrades such as Erling Ärlingsson, Ragnvald Magnusson and Karin Parrow also studied in Paris in the autumn of 1930. In October 1932, Inge Schiöler held his first solo exhibition at the Artists’ House in Stockholm to positive reviews from visitors and critics.
The increasing pace of work with irregular and poor eating habits during the winter of 1932/1933, together with the onset of a flu in March 1933, worsened Schiöler’s mental health. He neglected his meals and contented himself with a few pieces of sugar to quench his hunger, and with his hypersensitivity he was personally tormented by all who had difficulty and sometimes did not want to eat because he knew that others were starving. He also had financial problems because it was not easy to find buyers and it happened that he sold paintings for SEK 50 each. Because of pride he was also reluctant to accept help from his friends. In March 1933, the family made sure that he returned to Strömstad. During the summer of 1933, his mental state deteriorated further and in June he destroyed all the paintings he had in his studio in Strömstad City Hall.
On October 7, 1933, it was established at the Bethany Foundation’s Hospital in Gothenburg that he suffered from schizophrenia . Since they did not have the opportunity to cope with such care, Schiöler was transferred on November 18 to St. Jörgen’s mental hospital at Hisingen in Gothenburg. He hallucinated, heard voices and suffered from persecution ideas.
Inge Schiöler was to be cared for at St. Jörgens Hospital for 27 years between 1933 and 1960. During his darkest years, 1933-1941, at St. Jörgens, Schiöler had his definitive breakthrough as an artist. In November 1933, he had an exhibition at the Swedish-French Art Gallery in Stockholm with 31 oil paintings. The exhibition was a minor breakthrough, but the real breakthrough was a retrospective exhibition in the autumn of 1938 at the Swedish-French Art Gallery, with 149 works – this was his most important exhibition during his lifetime. In 1940, Göteborgs Konsthall had a retrospective exhibition with 80 works. The hospital journal states that on September 30, 1940, the artist visited the Art Gallery in the company of his mother, sister and a caretaker.
After nine years of total passivity (1933-1941), Schiöler began in March 1942 to make small simple chalk drawings on the hospital’s toilet paper. In the following years, the state of his health gradually improved, and during the second half of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s, artistic activity was largely resumed.
After his mother’s death in 1955, the director of Galerie God Konst in Gothenburg, Gunnar Hjorthén, got in touch with the artist’s sisters and was entrusted with the sale and review of Schiöler’s work. In 1956-57, the family was able to build a cottage for Inge at Sydkoster. For Schiöler, the house was crucial for both social rehabilitation and a fixed point for the artistic activity.
During the long hospital stay, various psychotropic drugs had been tried without any decisive results. On April 14, 1960, Nozinan was deployed , which resulted in an astonishing improvement in his health. On October 27, 1960, Schiöler was discharged on probation and in practice he left the hospital on that date. He was formally discharged from St. Jörgen’s on September 24, 1962. The summers of the 1960s in the archipelago around the Koster Islands would be intense periods of painting. In 1964, Schiöler received the Prince Eugene Medal “for outstanding artistic deed”. In 1965, he received the State Artist Award. In 1967, Schiöler became acquainted with Ann Dikman and became engaged to her in November.
In the spring and summer of 1970, he made his last oil paintings. Schiöler is represented at, among others, the National Museum of Denmark, the Modern Museum in Stockholm, the Gothenburg Art Museum the Nordic Watercolour Museum, the Kalmar Art Museum, the Malmö Museum , the Borås Art Museum and the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
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