Oskar Andersson

Biography

As a teenager, Andersson took a job at the Royal Mint. Realizing his real passion was drawing, he enrolled in a technology school and graduated with good marks, though design work didn't appeal to him. His teacher Kaleb Althin encouraged him to try caricature instead. At age twenty, Andersson got his first cartoons published in the magazine Söndags-Nisse and soon joined the staff there.

Inspired by late-19th-century American and English comic artists, he created Sweden's first recurring comic strips around the turn of the century: Bröderna Napoleon och Bartholomeus Lunds från Grönköping Resa Jorden Runt (two brothers on a world tour), Mannen Som Gör Vad Som Faller Honom In (a man who acts on any whim), and Urhunden (a prehistoric dog and its owner). He was apparently friends with sculptor Carl Milles. In 1906, Andersson shot himself, ending his life.

He had experienced long depressions and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). The full reasons are not known, but he also dealt with social anxiety, and while working as a reportage cartoonist he witnessed severe mistreatment of military horses—as an animal lover, this worsened his depression. He is buried at Ekerö church cemetery.

Career

Andersson's best-known strip, "Mannen som gör vad som faller honom in" (The Man Who Does Whatever Comes To His Mind), was one of Sweden's first recurring comic strips. This 20-episode serial follows an anarchistic man who does whatever he wants, no matter how amoral. His other works include Urhunden, about a prehistoric man and his pet dinosaur, and countless political satire cartoons. Among his contemporaries, Andersson was primarily known for his caricatures, published in Swedish newspapers Söndags-Nisse and Strix between 1897 and 1906.