Did you know that North Minneapolis was once home to two brothers who were well-known artists of Swedish descent? The Wedin brothers both emigrated to the United States at different times but both ended up in North Minneapolis.
Elof Wedin was born in Sweden in 1901 and was the youngest of six children. He immigrated to the United States in 1919 and settled in Minneapolis. Because he had both a talent and compassion for art, even at a young age, he took night classes at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in the early 1920s. He married Lillian Westman and they had two sons, Winslow and Gary. He entered the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926 to study under well-known teacher and artist George Oberteuffer. Two years later, he returned here and took a job doing pipe coverings for boilers while pursuing his fine art after work and on weekends in a studio he set up in the garage of their North Minneapolis home.
He had talent and interest in portraiture but with little demand for them in Minneapolis at that time, he did portraits and “character studies” of family, friends and neighbors. During the 1930s, his portraits became more modernist in style.
He also painted landscapes, an interest that was the subject of his entry in the 1934 Minnesota State Fair. During the depression of the 1930s Elof Wedin participated in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. His paintings focused on local and regional depictions of things like street scenes, small towns and Minnesota’s North Shore. However, his works often had views in a highly abstract geometric style. His eventual style grew into abstract expressionism.
Elof Wedin had a long career, and exhibited work and received numerous awards both in the Midwest and throughout the country. He passed away in February 28,1983 in Hennepin County.
Peter Wedin was Elof’s less well-known older brother, who’s art form was completely different. While Elof’s paintings are considered fine art, Peter’s art form is primarily wood-relief, which is carving a picture in wood to give it a raised affect and then painting it, and is considered Folk Art.
Peter was born in Sweden in 1894 and he immigrated to the United States in 1923. He worked as a woodcarver for a furniture factory in Minneapolis from 1923 to 1930. He then moved to Canada. After 13 years in Montreal, Wedin returned to Minneapolis in 1943. He lived with his wife, Elsa, and his daughters at 4330 James Ave. N. and worked at a trade in order to support himself as a painter and a woodcarver.
He visited Sweden four times and studied portrait and landscape painting at the Hermods Correspondence Institute in Sweden. He once exhibited his woodcarvings in Karlskoga, Sweden. His artwork was also shown in exhibitions at the Chicago Swedish Club, Swedish-American Artist’s Association, the Scandinavian-American Artists Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1926 and at the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. One of his works graces the cover of the book Swedes in the Twin Cities.
Peter Wedin passed away on August 29, 1979 in Hennepin County.
The two brothers, with two very different art forms, both left Sweden and ended up in North Minneapolis.