Torsten Edvard Billman (6 May 1909 – 6 April 1989) was a Swedish artist who worked as a printmaker, illustrator, and buon fresco painter. He counts as one of the 20th century's premier wood-engravers.Torsten Billman , satirarkivet.se, retrieved 28 June 2014
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 1920s and 30s. 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."Ekelöf, Gunnar, Torsten Billman, Konstrevy No. 5-6, Stockholm, 1942, p. 227.
Biography
Early years 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."Sjöberg, Leif, Torsten Billman and the Wood Engraver's Art, The American Scandinavian Review, Vol. LXI, No. 2, June 1973, New York, N.Y., p. 163. "It was my first vernissage", said Torsten Billman.Montgomery, Küllike, Torsten Billman, Bildförlaget Öppna Ögon, Stockholm, 1986, p. 9.
His 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. In 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. Torsten had no desire to become a tailor.Lennervald, Dan, Torsten Billman, bildmakaren, published by Halland Art Museum and The Workers' Educational Association in Sweden, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 12. What he looked for was both freedom and contact with human beings, work communion.Jungmarker, Gunnar, Torsten Billman, Folket i Bilds Konstklubb, Svenska Mästargrafiker IV, Stockholm, 1956, p. 6.
Years at sea Billman was 17 years old when he in Stockholm, 1926, signed on SS Valencia; a cargo-boat plying the Mediterranean. He first worked as a deckhand; too young to sign up for a job in the engine department (under 18 years old).ILO: Co 15 - Minimum Age (Trimmers and Stokers), 1921 (No. 15). Convention Fixing the Minimum Age for the Admission of Young Persons to Employment as Trimmers or Stokers. Entry into force: 20 Nov 1922. In 1927 he became a coal trimmer. His artistic awakening was on SS Nippon, in 1928, a bigger long-distance runner plying the Far East. With white school chalk he drew caricatures of his fellow seamen and officers on the soot-blackened walls and bulkheads of the stokehole. Drawings that evoked encouragement from the men in the forecastle and also from the officers.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 19. "That ship put my slumbering pictoral talent in motion. I documented and I stored images – this I understood afterwards", Billman recalls.Sjöberg, Leif, New York, 1973, p. 164. After the next ship SS Nordic, early in 1929, he told his sister, Ingegerd, that he wanted to become an artist.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 21. He worked on five different merchant ships 1926–1929 and 1932 as a deckhand (1926–27), coal trimmer and stoker.
First woodcut Torsten Billman's cousin on his mother's side Nils Svahn (1890–1936) was an editorial cartoonist at the newspaper Social-Demokraten, in Stockholm 1920–29. During Torsten's visit in Stockholm in the autumn of 1929, Nils explained a little about the woodcut for Torsten. Returned to Kullavik from military service in the Navy in Karlskrona, as a stoker on 1929–1930, he made his first woodcuts Hands (1930) and Thirst (1930) as an unemployed stoker.List of graphic artwork 1930-1988, has been made by curator Küllike Montgomery at Gothenburg Museum of Art and later also at Nationalmuseum's graphics department, Stockholm. The list is published in: Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, s. 424 - 431. Billman had not been to any art museum or anything like that and he know nothing about woodcut technique, so his first wood engravings was cut out of the wood of a margarine case with an ordinary carpenter's knife.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 23. Artistically he was "the complete savage", but he became interested when he saw reproductions of Frans Masereel and Käthe Kollwitz and when he later saw lithographs by Honoré Daumier it was a stirring experience for him.Hoppe, Ragnar & Wettergren, Erik (editors), Graphic Art In Sweden Today, P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., 14 Old Bond Street, London, 1946, p. 16.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 23. The reproductions of Frans Masereel, Käthe Kollowitz and Honoré Daumier were from the Swedish journals Tidevarvet and Fönstret, that his sister Ingegerd Billman had sent to him.
Images to union magazine Torsten Billman's first published images (an ink drawing) was published in the November 1930 issue of the union magazine Eldaren (The Stoker). He also made a few covers for the union magazine Sjömannen (The Sailor). His very last work of art was the Christmas 1988 issue cover.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 104, 108, 111.
Art studies Upon the recommendation of a German woman in Kullavik he gained admittance in 1931 to The Industrial Arts School in Gothenburg, with Hjalmar Eldh as a teacher. Billman studied book illustration at the school. A good example of woodcut making from this period is A Fiddlers Burial (1931), inspired by a poem from collection of verse Black Ballades by the Swedish poet Dan Andersson. He also made five linoleum cuts (linocut) with which he illustrated Upton Sinclair's novel Jimmie Higgins (unpublished illustrations). A sympathy for the little fellow and the underprivileged is a pervading characteristic of all his graphic work from that time on.
When Frans Billman died in 1930, the family had received some money on Frans' life insurance. During the second term at The Industrial Arts School, Torsten Billman had no money left for the studies. One morning in April 1932, on the train from Kullavik to art school, Billman wrote to his sister about expensive water colours he cannot afford to buy.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, p. 28, 438. Letter to Ingegerd Billman from Torsten Billman 1932-04-19 (Torsten Billman estate).
Billman tried to get work on a ship again. In the summer of 1932, he signed on his last ship, SS Marie. He had bought some sketchbooks so that he could draw during the trip. With these drawings he was accepted as a student at Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg in 1933. The teacher Sigfrid Ullman (1886–1960) discovered Torsten Billman early. Under Sigfrid Ullman's direction he was able to work according to his own intuition, and here he came on an even keel again. Torsten Billman left Valand 1934, after only three terms.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, pp. 29 - 32.
Woodcuts made after the trip to Antwerp 1936 In the spring of 1936, the Swedish composer Gösta Nystroem, that was curator at Göteborgs Konsthall 1934–1936, organizes a scholarship to Billman. Billman was given the opportunity to study art in March and April in Antwerp. The journey gave inspiration for new motifs. But above all had the harbour environments strongly reminded him of his years as a sailor. Within a year after the trip he made some of his classic black and white woodcuts with sailor motifs such as: Through the Red Sea – Changing of the guard in the stokehole (1936) and The newly signed on sailors (1936), which is one of Billman's best-known woodcuts. About the woodcut Stoker watch goes over deck in the storm (1936/37) the artist said: "I remember the first scene I got inspiration from. It was when the watch came up and the boat was filled with water and there they stood up to their necks in water, so to speak. That I thought, I would try to portray. But it took many years. I had stored such motifs."Ryndel, Nils (editor) & Röhlander, Bengt (producer), Bilder med sälta (Pictures with Saltiness). Nils Ryndel, art historian, author and curator at Gothenburg Museum of Art, interviewing Torsten Billman in his studio in Norbyvallda, outside Kungsbacka. Film by Sveriges Television (SVT), Stockholm, 1974. "I've experienced all my images myself", Torsten Billman often underlined.Romare, Kristian (editor), Tidsbilder (Time Images). Kristian Romare, art critic and art-program producer at SVT, interviewing Torsten Billman in his studio. Film by Sveriges Television (SVT), Stockholm 1984.
At the crossroads Torsten Billman's girlfriend since 1933 (Valand School of Fine Art), Kristina Hedenström (b. 1910), traveled to Paris in March 1938 to study art. Billman visited Paris in May and September 1938, and he met Swedes who had participated in the Spanish Civil War. The impressions from the journeys through Nazi Germany by train was a confirmation that a new major European war was imminent. During the visit in September he realized that their relationship was over – Kristina's intention was to stay in Paris.
In March 1939 Billman traveled to London. He made drawings for newspapers in Gothenburg and also visited Tate Gallery and The British Museum. In London he entered a planned marriage of convenience with a Jewish woman from Germany who intended to flee via Sweden.
In mid-August 1939 Billman biked to Paris (from Gothenburg) to try to persuade Kristina to return to Sweden, when a major war in Europe seemed to be coming closer by the day. After a week in Paris World War II breaks out. The 10 September 700 Swedes were transported by train from Paris to Dieppe. From Dieppe they were evacuated by two Swedish hired boats – over mined waters – to Gothenburg. Kristina Hedenström never returned to Sweden. She died in Paris in November 1943 at 33 years old.Lennervald, Dan, Kungsbacka, 2010, pp. 36 - 39.
Anti-Nazi images