Introduction 1925-34 Travels in Europe 1935-38 In Yugoslavia 1939-45 War years 1945-68 In Sweden Contact © Olaf Jordan |
Olaf Jordan was born in 1902 in Decin (Tetschen) in Bohemia in the Czech Republic, then Austria. He studied art at the Dresden Academy 1920-25 and then made study trips throughout southern Europe. He stayed for longer periods in France and Holland and lived in Yugoslavia between 1935 and 1938. After the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 Jordan had to return to Decin. He was eventually conscripted by the German army and was assigned to a Cossack Division in 1942 as an army artist. He lived with these Cossacks on the Balkan front till May, 1945. In 1947 he could reunite with his family in Sweden. He gradually established himself as a portrait and landscape painter in the town of Linköping, where he died in 1968. Jordan was totally unaffected by modern currents in art; with his skill for detail and form he portrayed his models with fascination and respect in the style of the old masters. |