Mats Bergquist b. 1960

Mats Bergquist (b. 1960 in Stockholm) is a Swedish artist working in both Sweden and Italy. In the borderland between minimalism and icon tradition, he creates meditative works characterized by silence and timelessness. Using simple materials and techniques—thin layers of pigment and beeswax (encaustic) on wooden panels, sanded to a matte or shimmering surface—he produces works stripped of figurative content, but with subtle dents, bulges, and impressions.

Educated at Atelier 17 in Paris 1981–1982, Bergquist had his first solo exhibition at Gunnar Olsson Gallery in 1983 and continued to exhibit there on a regular basis until 2018. Additionally, his work has been exhibited at, among others, Atipografia, Arzignano (2022, 2015), The Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm (2022), Fondazione Cardinale Giacomo Lercaro, Bologna (2019), Marignana Arte, Venice (2018), MANN – Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples (2016), Nanna Preußners, Hamburg (2025, 2022, 2016, 2012), and Galerie Wichtendahl, Berlin (2022, 2021, 2019).