Hjortdjur (Deer)

The deer is sculpted in bronze and looks very natural. As if we had just come upon the shy animal at a distance, it stands with raised head and cocked ears. How does the sculpture make you feel?

The surrounding city park has come about through a collaboration between the municipality and the formerly privately owned landscaping company, Örebro läns Trädgårdaktiebolag. Since the 1970s, the company has been owned by the municipality and has been responsible through the years for purchasing nearly all of the sculptures for the park. The purchase of Arvid Knöppel’s deer in 1953 was the company’s first sculptural acquisition. A similar sculpture was already standing at this time in Marabouparken in Sundbyberg.

Knöppel’s speciality was depicting animals, and he is considered one of Sweden’s best animal artists and a master of capturing animals’ movements in the moment. With a father who was a hunting enthusiast and friend of the nature artist Bruno Liljefors, Knöppel developed an early love of the forest and its inhabitants.
As an adult, he bought a farm a bit north of Arvika, which came to be known as Knöppel Ridge. There, he arranged living models for his animal studies by building a sort of wildlife reserve or zoo for Swedish fauna on his own property. The reserve included several types of deer, including red, fallow and roe, as well as moose, foxes, hares, wild geese, partridges and a few lynxes.

Knöppel was a successful artist known for both his sculptures and his drawings. In Längbroparken in the Norr section of the city, you will find the sculpture Björnar (Bears), and the municipality’s collection contains about thirty original prints of his drawings. While his sculptures often have a rather reserved design language, his drawings show fast and free sketches.