Bengt Brattström was born in Lidköping in 1917 and graduated from the Cathedral School in Lund in 1936. After that he headed for the Technical school (Konstfack) in Stockholm for five years of studies. Bengt trained for becoming a drawing teacher and chose advertising as his advanced studies.
At school Bengt met his future wife Lisbeth Davidson, who also was a student at Konstfack.
After finishing his studies, Bengt got shorter employments and worked as a free-lancer. Both Bengt and Lisbeth did illustrations for the book series Min Skattkammare (My treasury), published by Natur & Kultur.
Other tasks were illustrations for different games, among others “the Pirate Island” (Sjörövarön) and “Among butterflies and bugs” (Bland fjärilar och småkryp). Bengt has also done the illustrations for 12 different wooden animal puzzles. He was also the illustrator for a well-known cookbook, Stora kokboken.
Bengt ran his own business as an illustrator. The logo of the company was an oak leaf, and the slogan was “Printed matters with nerve”.
During many years, and up to his death, he worked as a drawing teacher at the school Södra Latin. Parallelly he also was a teacher at the night school of Konstfack. the subject matter was tenets of color. It was during these times he also wrote a book (Färglära, 1959) on the subject, probably with the purpose to use the book as required reading.
In the book a chapter is devoted to similarities between color composition theory and the composition theory in music.
Classical music was, namely, one of his big interests and he often listened to music when working from home. His wife once pleaded to him to turn down the volume, since she had put the children to bed. But the children complained and said it was much harder to go sleep if it was quiet, they were so accustomed to the music.
