Eric Grate graduated in 1916 and then studied for a time at the Technical School before transferring to studies at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm 1917–1921. He then undertook a study trip as a scholar in Denmark and then made study trips to Germany, especially Munich, and to Austria, Spain, Italy and Greece. During his time in Germany, Grate mainly engaged in cubist painting and sculptural experiments. He also began to be influenced by classical sculpture.

 

He lived in Paris 1924–1933. There he was accompanied by other Swedish artists such as Nils Dardel, Isaac Grünewald, Sigrid Hjertén, Otto G. Carlsund and Otte Sköld. During this time he came to be influenced by contemporary French sculptors such as Aristide Maillol and Charles Despiau. In 1936 he became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and from 1941–1951 he was a professor there, a member of the National Art Council 1952–1955 and a member of the Thielska gallery's board from 1954.Eric Grate has executed several public sculptures in Sweden.

 

The most noticed is the work “The Etymological Woman Theft" at the entrance to the Karolinska Institutet in Solna in 1958.

Bergslag urn cast iron 109 cm high (1921–1922), Allmänna vägen in Majorna in Gothenburg.

Faun figure (1923), Hotel Liseberg, Kryddgården, Heden, Gothenburg

Statues on Norra Kungstornet (1925), Kungsgatan in Stockholm

Yxmannen on Djurgården (1930). Located close to Blockhusudden, Stockholm

Silvatica bronze, the Esplanade in Nässjö

Årstiderna Kalksten (1937–1941), Rosenbad, Stockholm

The Fountain of Transformations granite (1943–1955), Marabouparken in Sundbyberg

Navigare necesse est bronze 1953, Rödaberg School, Stockholm

Lying woman (circa 1954) bronze in fountain, Torget, Västertorp center, Stockholm

The tree (circa 1954) bronze, Torget in the center of Västertorp, Stockholm

The people and technology part of relief chamotte clay (1937), wall decoration for the world exhibition in Paris 1937, Runö kursgård, Åkersberga

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More about " Det entomologiska kvinnorovet"

"At the time Gröna Lund in Paris, Luna Parc, in the late 1920s the big draw was an Austrian born without arms and legs who, under the name Miss Violetta, was displayed on a tray on top of a pedestal and wearing a bag-like light green case. In her own way she was so beautiful and attractive that she was repeatedly courted by young gentlemen, more or less benevolently, it seems, and certainly in collusion with her female associates. Joining the spectators were a number of surrealist writers and artists - among them Eric Grate.

 

The poet Gunnar Ekelöf, who had later heard of her, writes that she fascinated them because she was like "a beautiful French pear as naturally and naturally armless and legless as ever a pear can be. She was a kind of living thing..” Eric Grate, for his part, saw it all from a wider perspective, in which he interwoven elements from the main sources of inspiration for his entire artistic work: nature, antiquity and primitive cultures. Thus he associated not only with the crimes of women so common in antiquity (the Sabines, Europa and the bull...) but also with similar events that constantly take place in the entomological realm; the insect world which, alongside the plant world, he loved to study and draw from since he was a child. In the multi-layered, ambiguous Entomologisk kvinnorov, which he conceived in 1928, he lets us witness how, in the relief's cramped stage space, an obviously feminine figure is abducted by two peculiar figures. One, who is busily pointing the way, is coquettishly dressed in a skirt with frills, while the head resembles the larvae of ants. Her companion, who virilely grabs the victim with feelers and suckers, has the features of a grasshopper caterpillar. The single delivery itself is provided with the body of an insect pupa and a head inspired by the pistil mark of flowers in its lobes. She is single-breasted like the Amazons of antiquity, and the flowing hair can also recall the helmet bush of these proud warrior women. These features become even more striking in the sculpture from 1932 that Grate named Amazon Pistill and where the one-liver appears in solitary majesty. Moreover, it is not without the fact that she resembles the fertility idols of certain primitive tribes. In this way, Eric Grate - beyond the current anecdote - with great surreal imagination and humor turned Miss Violetta's sad fate into something of a timeless allegory. The relief's three peculiar actors seem to be on their way to conquering a place in nature's eternal cycle."

 

Everything is in place in a clay sketch in fired clay from 1928, followed by a bronze relief, they are 25 cm high. He gave a tighter, more distinct form to the double-sized relief Kinnorovet in French limestone that he carved in Paris in 1934. That year the artist returned to Sweden for good. There he had to put aside his larger modernist and often surrealist works from the past ten years in Paris, which he could still only execute in plaster.

 

Because new modernist expressions were frozen out in the conservative Swedish art climate of the 30s and 40s. It would take two decades before he again took hold of Kvinnorovet and then to introduce significant changes in the group. But in the midst of this new work, at the end of 1954 he had this bronze example cast which faithfully follows the original version. It has remained unique and exhibits the vivid, "raw" patination that he had come to prefer at this time. What happened in 1954 was that Eric Grate began to sketch the large sculpture at the entrance to the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm that he was commissioned to carry out and that he chose to recast Kvinnorovet into a monumental free-relief for that purpose. One might wonder why he made this particular choice? It was hardly for the sake of the motif, the content, but because the composition seemed to him to have significant dynamic potential and also clearly decorative possibilities. These became the qualities that he consistently developed in the over two-meter-high free-standing sculpture that still sits atop a tall pillar at Karolinska Institutet's entrance. But it was far from always that its simplified, powerfully modernist play of form was perceived as the main content of the work was intended to be. Instead came the motif - with its roots in a quirky attraction at a Parisian amusement park! in the eye and caused offense in many quarters.

 

Miss Violetta as a kind of figurehead for a medical research center - how fitting was that?? A long-lasting debate arose, which took on new momentum at the inauguration of Entomologiskt kvinnorov in 1958 and which sometimes took fierce, sometimes comical expressions. Today almost forgotten, this controversy is one of the liveliest in 20th century Swedish art history. Pontus Grate