ELOF WEDIN:

Elof Wedin was born near Härnösand in the province Ångermanland in east central Sweden on June 28, 1901. Wedin was the youngest of six children. He immigrated to the United States in 1919, and settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In 1921, Wedin enrolled in night classes at the Minneapolis School of Art. During the day, Wedin supported himself and his artistic ambitions by working as a laborer insulating boilers and ductwork with asbestos.

In 1926, Wedin entered the Art Institute of Chicago to study under artist George Oberteuffer. Wedin married Lillian Westman in the same year, and together the couple had two sons: Winslow (1933) and Gary (1942).

Wedin returned to Minneapolis in 1928, and his artwork consisted of mainly portraits. Due to limited commissioned opportunities for portraiture, Wedin relied on family, friends, and neighbors for subjects of his early art work. Wedin continued work as a pipe coverer to support himself and entered his portraits in various local juried exhibitions to establish his reputation as a professional artist. In the early 1930s, Wedin's portraits developed into a more Modernist style, with elongated features and oval faces, and drew comparisons to the Italian Modernist artist Amedeo Modigliani.

In 1933, a trip home to Sweden sparked Wedin's interests in landscape painting, and subsequent works from Sweden were the subject of his first one-man show exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair in 1934. In the same period, Wedin participated in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, becoming part of the American Regionalism movement, depicting regional scenes of street life, small towns, and the North Shore of Minnesota in his paintings. Influenced by Modernists Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne, Wedin preferred geometric abstraction over realism in his regional landscape paintings. In 1936, Wedin boosted his national profile with a one-man exhibition featuring twenty of his paintings at the Hudson Walker Gallery in Midtown Manhattan.

From the 1940s to 1960s, Wedin's style continued to evolve to include more Abstract Expressionism, including elements of Cubism into his landscape and portrait paintings. In his career, Wedin held one-man exhibitions at the following institutions: the Harriet Hanley Gallery, Minneapolis; the Walker Art Center; the Kilbride-Bradley Gallery, Minneapolis; the MAA Gallery Minneapolis; Bethel College; the Bjorkman Gallery, Minneapolis; the Rockefeller Center, New York City; San Francisco Worlds Fair; the Swedish Club Minneapolis; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the University of Minnesota; the Los Angeles County Museum; and the Women's Club of Minneapolis. He also received numerous awards in his career at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts annual shows, the Minnesota State Fair exhibitions, and other events.

Elof Wedin died on February 28, 1983 due to complications from long-term asbestos exposure.

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Availability:

The collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Elof Wedin Papers. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Accession Information:

Accession number: 18,000

Processing Information:

Processed by: Leif Kopietz, July 2025

Catalog ID number: 9989883640204294

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Art -- Minnesota -- Exhibitions.

Art and state -- Minnesota.

Art, Abstract -- Minnesota.

Art, American -- Minnesota.

Artists -- Minnesota.

Geometry in art.

Modernism (Art) -- Minnesota.

Painting, American.

Swedish American artists.

Persons:

Wedin, Winslow, author.

Wedin, Gary, author.

Wedin, Lillian, author.

Wedin family.

Organizations:

Public Works of Art Project (U.S.), author.

Document Types:

Color slides.

Exhibition catalogs.

Photographs.

CD-Rs.

Digital photographs.

Files (digital files).

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