Ivar Kamke (Swedish painter) 1882 - 1936
Ivar Kamke (Stockholm, January 2, 1882 - Helsingborg, July 3, 1936) was a Swedish painter. Between 1906 and 1909, he lived and worked in Volendam. Kamke was the son of a teachers couple of German origin. He attended art school in Stockholm, under Oscar Björck. Already during studies, he was noted for his talent in making portraits and figures. After graduating, he made extensive travels through Europe. Between 1906 and 1909, he first went to the Netherlands to work and live in Volendam, where he depicted the picturesque fishing life to theme, He also made numerous portraits of the locals. In 1909 he went to Paris, where he briefly attended the Académie Colarossi. He then spent a year in Dachau, where he worked in the local art colony and where he met his future wife. Later he traveled to Algiers and then he went to Spain and England, especially to visit museums. In 1912 he returned to Stockholm. Kamke's style is rooted in realism, but was influenced by his teacher Björck characterized by looser method of impressionism. His portraits bear traces of the work of Wilhelm Leibl, whose work he had seen in Munich. After his return to Sweden in 1912 he also painted many nudes influenced by Anders Zorn. He often worked wet on wet with great attention to the lighting effect on the skin. From 1920 to 1924 Kamke works in Italy, where he worked in Venice, Siena and Rome. In the last decade of his life he regularly was commissioned to paint portraits, often of eminent persons, including King Gustaf V of Sweden. In 1935 he traveled to Rome to paint two portraits of Benito Mussolini. Kamke was a member of the Paris' Union Internationale des Beaux Arts et des Lettres "and the" Frankfurter Künstlerbund "and received several international awards. During an international exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1910 Kamke won a gold medal with a painting from the auction in Volendam. He died in 1936, aged 54 years. His work can be seen among others in the National Museum in Stockholm.
