Visit the LIAF Archive Website

Anna Boberg

Anna Boberg (1864 – 1935) was an artist from Stockholm who routinely worked in Lofoten. She never had the opportunity to receive formal artistic education but started painting after having made a travel to Spain in 1882. In connection with a trip to Norrland (in Northern Sweden) and North Norway in 1901 Anna visited Lofoten for the first time, and the encounter with this place gave genuine momentum to her artistic production. Across the next thirty-three years she had extended working residencies in Lofoten, primarily painting local motifs. Like the other so-called Lofoten painters she was concerned with mediating this place to the rest of Europe. In 1903 she exhibited her Lofoten paintings in Stockholm for the first time, and a 1905 exhibition in Paris helped to make the Lofoten landscape known to a French audience.
Anna Boberg is considered an important pioneering figure in the establishment of the Kunstnerhus in Lofoten, a residence and working place for artists coming here. In 1904 she had her architect husband design a studio on Svinøya near the entrance to Svolvær harbour. It was later donated to the organization of Norwegian visual artists and functioned as a residence for Swedish and Norwegian artists up to World War II. It was then demolished, but was replaced in 1952 by the larger artists' residence standing on a hill in another part of Svinøya today.

Anna Boberg was represented in the LIAF exhibition.