Artist Database

Axel Francis Zeraava Eriksson was born in Omaruru, South-West Africa in 1878. He was educated at Chalmers Tekniska Högskola in Götenborg, Sweden and then between 1903 and 1905 at the Berlin Academy. Whilst in Germany, Eriksson worked as an illustrator for the German Wild und Hund magazine.

In 1909 Eriksson returned to German South-West Africa, living in various towns including Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht. Despite numerous large commissions from Consolidated Diamond Mines, Eriksson struggled to make it as an artist. He moved to Warmbaths, and exhibited in Cape Town and Windhoek in 1924. During this time he also painted colourful portraits of Nama women.

Eriksson is known primarily as a landscape painter, using colour and impressionist style brush strokes to depict the soft haziness and grandeur of the South-West African landscape tinted by the morning or afternoon sun. His impressionistic treatment of the landscape is contrasted with his images of animals and wildlife. Eriksson produced some of the earliest wildlife studies of the century. Eriksson’s images of wildlife within the landscape made an important contribution to South-West African art history as he portrayed the symbiotic relationship between animals and the landscape, with animals in the foreground and the vast landscape extending far into the distance beyond.

Axel Eriksson died at the age of 46.