The artist Greta Hult studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts at the beginning of the 1920s. There she also met her future husband, Gösta Diehl. Together with fellow student, Hanna Scherfbeck, niece to the renowned artist Helene Scherfbeck, Greta Hult went to Paris in 1923. It seems likely that she was invited there by Gösta Diehl, who had moved to Paris the year before. The couple married in Helsinki in 1926.
Greta Hult continued her art studies in Paris. She also visited Italy in order to study ecclesiastical art.
Greta Hult made her debut as a painter in 1923 with a stained-glass work for the Helsinki Deaconess Institute’s church. The following year she exhibited her paintings at Salon Strindberg. A critic of Svenska Pressen wrote that ‘the young artist has a good sense of nuance and a natural feel for lines and colour’.
Greta Hult-Diehl and Gösta Diehl lived together in Paris until 1932 when Gösta Diehl returned to Finland. The couple divorced in 1936. In the spring of 1931, Greta Hult had also started the export and commission firm Franco-Fennia. One of her roles with this firm was to help Finnish visitors in Paris with practical matters. Hult was responsible for arranging the Finnish exhibition for the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris, where the Finnish travel pavilion was awarded a gold medal for its exhibition.
Greta Hult later remarried and remained in Paris for the rest of her life.
