Background
Folke Heybroek was born in Amsterdam to a Dutch banker and Swedish mother and was the youngest of four brothers.
Folke Heybroek was born in Amsterdam to a Dutch banker and Swedish mother and was the youngest of four brothers.
He studied art at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie under Heinrich Campendonk (1889–1957) a German expressionist who taught Decorative Art, printmaking and stained-glass.
In 1939 Heybroek married Brita Horn in Birger Jarlsgatan, Stockholm. Had his first solo exhibition at the van Lier gallery in Amsterdam. And moved to Monreale near Palermo in Sicily.
In 1940, only Horn"s Swedish nationality prevented their internment by the fascist Italian authorities.
In 1942 Heybroek held a critically acclaimed exhibition at the Gummeson Gallery in Stockholm, selling circa 60 works, oil paintings, gouaches and drawings, his expressionistic style at this stage was strongly redolent of Van Gogh. This show lead to a commission for the mural Midsummer for a factory canteen and started a career of public murals, sculptures and stained glass work.
Throughout his career he created decorative art, public sculpture, installations and stain glass windows for more than thirty churches and forty schools plus courthouses and community halls. Since 1959 his sculpture of animals depicting human vices and virtues has fronted the Sala judicial center in Vastmanland.