Art Bulletin ofNationalmuseumStockholm

Volume 22

Women Pioneers: Swedish Design in Between the Wars

Läckö Castle13 June – 23 August 2015

Nationalmuseum Design@Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm4 December 2015 – 14 February 2016

Magnus OlaussonDirector of Collections and Research

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 22, 2015

© Stockholms Auktionsverk, Stockholm (Fig. 5, p. 35)© Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels (Fig. 2, p. 38)© Teylers Museum, Haarlem (Fig. 3, p. 39)© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Shelfmark: Riserva.S.81(int.2) (Fig. 2, p. 42)© Galerie Tarantino, Paris (Figs. 3–4, p. 43)© Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain (Figs. 3–4, pp. 46–47)© National Library of Sweden, Stockholm (Figs. 5–6, pp. 48–49)© Uppsala Auktionskammare, Uppsala (Fig. 1, p. 51)© Landsarkivet, Gothenburg/Johan Pihlgren (Fig. 3, p. 55)© Västergötlands museum, Skara (Fig. 4, p. 55)© Svensk Form Design Archive/Centre for Business History (Fig. 2, p. 58)© Svenskt Tenn Archive and Collection, Stockholm (Fig. 4, p. 60)© Denise Grünstein (Fig. 5, p. 152)© The National Gallery, London (Figs. 1–3, 6–7, 17, pp. 167–169, 172–173, 179)© The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo/Jarre Anne Hansteen, CC-BY-NC (Fig. 8, p. 174)© Nicholas Penny (Figs. 9–10, 12–14, 16, pp. 175, 177, 179)© Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala (Fig. 11, p. 176)© Getty Museum CC-BY. Digital image courtesy of the Gettys Open Content Program (Fig. 15, p. 178)© The Swedish Royal Court/Håkan Lind (Fig. 9, p. 188)© Eva-Lena Bergström (Figs. 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9, pp. 191–192, 194–196, 198)© Statens Museum for Kunst/National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, CC-PD (Fig. 2, p. 193)© The Nordic Museum, Stockholm/Karolina Kristensson (Fig. 5, p. 195)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, is published with generous support from the Friends of the Nationalmuseum.

Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Malmén.

Cover IllustrationAnne Vallayer (1744–1818), Portrait of a Violinist, 1773. Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm. Purchase: The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7297.

PublisherBerndt Arell, Director General

EditorJanna Herder

Editorial CommitteeJanna Herder, Linda Hinners, Merit Laine, Lena Munther, Magnus Olausson, Martin Olin, Maria Perers and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson

PhotographsNationalmuseum Photographic Studio/Linn Ahlgren, Bodil Beckman, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Per-Åke Persson and Hans Thorwid

Picture EditorRikard Nordström

Photo Credits© Samlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Fig. 5, p. 15)© Museum Bredius The Hague (Fig. 6, p. 16)© The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo/Jacques Lathion (Fig. 2, p. 23)© Kalmar läns museum, Kalmar/Rolf Lind (Fig. 3, p. 27)

Graphic DesignBIGG

LayoutAgneta Bervokk

Translation and Language EditingGabriella Berggren, Erika Milburn and Martin Naylor

PublishingJanna Herder (Editor) and Ingrid Lindell (Publications Manager)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published annually and contains articles on the history and theory of art relating to the collections of the Nationalmuseum.

NationalmuseumBox 16176SE–103 24 Stockholm, Swedenwww.nationalmuseum.se© Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners of the reproduced works

ISSN 2001-9238

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exhibitions/women pioneers: swedish design in between the wars

Women Pioneers: Swedish Design in Between the Wars

Läckö Castle13 June – 23 August 2015

Nationalmuseum Design@Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm4 December 2015 – 14 February 2016

Magnus OlaussonDirector of Collections and Research

Fig. 1 Wilhelmina Wendt (1896–1988), Brush, 1935. Produced by Skånska Ättiksfabriken, later Perstorp AB. Silver and black isolite (plastic), 8 x 9 x 0.7 cm. Nationalmuseum, NMK 74/2013.

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exhibitions/women pioneers: swedish design in between the wars

tists (Fig. 2). Nor can we disregard the de-vastating effects of the Second World War, which cut off channels of communication and supplies of raw materials essential to ar-tistic production. The postwar generational change accelerated the process whereby previous generations of artists, male and female, were forgotten.

For a long time, the Nationalmuseum upheld the task of educating public tas-te, and this hampered the breadth in the acquisition policy. Coupled with a lack of funding for new acquisitions, many signifi-cant design objects from the interwar years were absent from the Museum’s collections. In 2012, therefore, the Nationalmuseum launched a project to actively collect works by women pioneers of design. The results can be seen in this exhibition, in which half of the pieces were acquired in the past few

tionalism. With a few exceptions, the role played by women in this period of inventive and colourful design is rarely highlighted. History has forgotten these female desig-ners. One reason is that modernism as an artistic project was identified with male cha-racteristics. By definition, the great artist genius was, according to the contemporary mindset, a man, and only rarely a woman. Another reason is that many of the women artists of the time made their debut in the 1920s, when an ornate, colourful style was in fashion (Fig. 1). When tastes changed in the 1930s, these artists were not necessari-ly successful at reinventing themselves, so they appeared dated and were overlooked. Moreover, many of them worked for large companies such as Svenskt Tenn and C. G. Hallberg, which preferred to highlight the company brand rather than individual ar-

The exhibition Women Pioneers: Swedish Design in Between the Wars featured works by 22 artists and designers, some well-known and some less so, including Estrid Ericson, Greta Magnusson Grossman, Tyra Lund-gren, Anna Petrus (Fig. 4), Sylvia Stave and Wilhelmina Wendt. In all, there were 150 featured pieces from the Nationalmuseum collections, in a range of materials inclu-ding cast iron, ceramics, glass and silver. For various reasons, however, the exhibi-tion did not include textile art. These wo-men were successful designers and artists during the interwar years but have since been more or less forgotten.

Swedish crafts and design enjoyed an upsurge in popularity between the two world wars. The style of this period is often referred to internationally as Swedish Gra-ce and is known in Sweden as early Func-

Fig. 2 Anna Petrus (1886–1949), Sculpture, Lion, 1926. Produced by Svenskt Tenn. Pewter, H. 14.5 cm. Nationalmuseum, NMK 67/2014.

Fig. 3 Sylvia Stave (1908–1994), Water jug, 3834, 1936. Produced by C. G. Hallbergs Guldsmeds AB, 1930–34. Silver plate.Nationalmuseum, NMK 198/2013.

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years. The most significant acquisition is a collection of works by Sylvia Stave, produ-ced during a short but intense period of her career (Fig. 3).1

The exhibition was co-produced by Nationalmuseum and Läckö Castle (exhi-bited at Läckö Castle 13 June–23 August 2015), and curated by Magnus Olausson. A book in Swedish (Kvinnliga pionjärer: Svensk form under mellankrigstiden) was published on the occasion of the exhibition, with ar-ticles by Magnus Olausson, Christian Björk, Anders Bengtsson, Micael Ernstell and Jes-sica Kempe.2 In September 2015, the exhi-bition project was presented at the first his-torical workshop of MoMoWo – Women’s creativity since the Modern Movement, a project co-funded by the European Union. The project is presented in the very first MoMoWo open access publication.3

Exhibition curators: Magnus Olausson and Maria PerersExhibition design: Johan Rosenqvist, YoYoTechLighting design: Jan Gouiedo, Jan Gouiedo ABExhibition technology: Tomas Emtemo, Pär Lindblom, Thomas Lundgren, Carl RehnströmGraphic design: Agneta BervokkConservation: Ulrika Schaeder and Veronika ErikssonExhibition coordinator: Anneli Carlsson Notes:1. Micael Ernstell and Magnus Olausson, ”Sylvia Stave in the Nationalmuseum”, in Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm, Volume 20, 2013, Stockholm 2014, pp. 43–46: http://national-museum.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:724767/FULLTEXT02.pdf 2. Kvinnliga pionjärer: Svensk form under mellankrigs-tiden, Magnus Olausson and Eva-Lena Karlsson (eds.), Nationalmuseum, Stockholm 2015.3. MoMoWo (Women’s creativity since the Modern Movement) 1st International Conference-Workshop, 23–25 September, 2015, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, University of Leiden, The Netherlands: http://www.momowo.eu/publications/openaccess-publications/(accessed 17 June 2016).

exhibitions/women pioneers: swedish design in between the wars

Fig. 4 Anna Petrus (1886–1949), c. 1925. Unknown photographer.

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exhibitions/women pioneers: swedish design in between the wars

Interiors from the exhibition Women Pioneers: Swedish Design in Between the Wars.