Finn Sködt (1944–2019) was a Danish graphic designer and artist renowned for his exceptional ability to find and blend colours. After studying at the Graphic Institute of Denmark in Copenhagen and the Aarhus Academy of Fine Arts, Sködt spent his career working across textiles, graphic design, painting, sculpture and colour composition from his home and workshop in Helgenæs, Denmark.
“Colours are fluid and the colour blue, especially, is always going somewhere.”
– Finn Sködt
For Sködt, colour could never be fully contained within a system.
He believed it should be experienced directly through pigment and material, rather than understood at a distance through classification. Colour was at once tangible and abstract: immediately perceptible to the intuitive eye, yet elusive when subjected to rules and systems.
“Colour, to Finn, was never something fixed, but something intuitive and relational. He was anti colour systems. Instead, he collected colours from the world around him, mixed pigments by hand, painted them onto paper and arrived at Kvadrat with stacks of these samples, from which he would develop his palettes.”
– Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat and Mette Bendix, Partner and Director of Kvadrat
Finn Sködt began creating upholstery and curtain textiles for Kvadrat in the early 1980s.
He had a clear, pure aesthetic, often characterised by strong colours and, in particular, his favourite: ultramarine blue. His process began with the primary colours – red, yellow and blue – from which he developed further tones and nuances.
“His way of working is particularly relevant today.
As colour is increasingly experienced through screens, Finn’s work reminds us that colour is physical.
It changes with material, surface and light, and through its relationship to the colours around it.
Divina embodies this thinking.”
– Anders Byriel, CEO of Kvadrat and Mette Bendix, Partner and Director of Kvadrat