John Bauer Spent His Life Trying to Escape His Trolls

This biography documentary explores the artistic journey of John Bauer, a Swedish artist renowned for his illustration of fairy tales. While celebrated for his unique folk tales, Bauer sought to move beyond his famous troll creations. This video examines the artist's life and the path he wished to take, before his tragic end. John Bauer gave Sweden its trolls, huge, silent, moss covered creatures that seemed to grow out of the forest itself. But Bauer did not want to be remembered only as the troll illustrator. Behind the fairy tale images was another artist trying to emerge: stranger, quieter, more serious, and harder to place. He had begun to move beyond the work that made him famous when, in November 1918, he boarded the steamboat Per Brahe with his wife Ester Ellqvist, their young son Bengt, and the belongings of the life he was trying to change. The boat sank on Lake Vättern. This is the story of John Bauer, Bland tomtar och troll, Princess Tuvstarr, the forest that made him famous, and the future he never reached. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE He Made the Holy Look Like a Threat | Harry Clarke    • He Turned Stained Glass Into Something Dan...   00:00 The Trolls 00:50 The Trap 04:29 The Escape Plan 05:40 The Boat 06:36 What Sweden Remembered Shoot The Moon uncovering the artists history almost erased. #ArtHistory #JohnBauer #HiddenHistory #DarkFairyTales Image attributions: Grave of John, Ester and Bengt Bauer-2.jpg W.carter, Own work, via Wikimedia Commons Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Lake Vättern.svg CIA World Factbook, retouched by Pyfisch, via Wikimedia Commons Public Domain This biography documentary explores the artistic journey of John Bauer, a Swedish artist renowned for his illustration of fairy tales. While celebrated for his unique folk tales, Bauer sought to move beyond his famous troll creations. This video examines the artist's life and the path he wished to take, before his tragic end.