Staffan Hallström was a Swedish artist who was fascinated by the game of chess and its relationship with real-life challenges and the strength of the intellect. He was born in the early 20th century and started painting chess games in the 1960s.

Hallström saw the chess pieces as soldiers in a war game that could be moved around and placed according to calculations and strategies on the playing field. His paintings explored the contradictions and conflicts that could be related to human life and varied with pieces indefinitely.

Hallström's painting Fyrschack I depicts the game in its incipient phase and shows many of the attributes that made him widely known as one of the 20th century's most colorful among Swedish artists.