Gallery 01:10

LONGING FOR OTHER WORLDS In response to the increasing industrialization, artists and writers around the turn of the century looked for inspiration in the subconscious, in dreams and memories, focusing on inner worlds, feelings and imagination, instead of external reality. All over Europe, a fascination for spirituality, spiritism and theosophy was growing. The Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) was one of the artists who would devote most of her practice to visualizing an invisible dimension.

Other artists looked to the world of literature, folk tales and mythology. Inspiration was also sought in the style of self-taught artists and in the works made by Ernst Josephson (1851–1906) and Carl Fredrik Hill (1849–1911) during their periods of illness. Artists who found their subject matter in everyday settings and encounters could also convey poetic undercurrents. The immediate surroundings are portrayed in lyrical images, as if to preserve the life that was threatened by the contemporary turbulence. Dreaming and fantasizing about other worlds and past times became a way of coping with wartime isolation. Children are presented as an image of mankind, occasionally as the bearers of hope, or as a reflection of inner, existential moods.