The Boy Who Wouldn't Die - On the Book "I'm Adding Sunshine to My Paint"

Five years old, Harald Sandberg (1912-1983) came down with a double-sided pneumonia. Three doctors in Söderhamn, a city in northern Sweden, said that there was nothing they could do. (This was in the time when the Spanish flue killed tens of millions of people around the world.)

Harald survived, but the disease damaged his heart, and he was told that he was unlikely to see his tenth birthday. He looked forward to that day with trepidation, but it was his father who died on that day, 39 years old.

Early on, Harald wanted to become an artist, but a doctor said that his heart was too week for him to continue school and suggested that he should become a hairdresser. Which he did, and a successful one at that, but he never gave up on his dream.

“I’m Adding Sunshine to My Paint” tells the story of the first four decades of Harald Sandberg’s life, from his birth on August 13, 1912, to the end of 1955, when he had accomplished his childhood’s dream of becoming an artist – a painter. He had had his first solo exhibits in Stockholm as well as a very successful exhibit in Paris. By then he had also brought three children into the world together with his wife Constance.

“I’m Adding Sunshine to My Paint” includes a diary that Harald wrote in 1946 during a critical phase of his struggle to become an artist. It also contains two interviews made during the last two years of his life, as well as over 100 photos and illustrations.

The book was written by his son Hans Sandberg.

Over the coming months, I will post excerpts from the book - both texts and pictures - here and on my substack for the book. 

Scan the QR code below to find my book on Amazon.