Gallery 01:12
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS / THE COLLECTOR AND THE VISIONARY ROLF DE MARÉ / THE STOCKHOLM EXHIBITION
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS The new international art was not the only thing that drew Swedish artists to continental Europe. They were also attracted by the cities themselves. Here, people were free to live and express their identities in ways that were not possible in Sweden. The networks and friendships between artists, collectors and art dealers in the European cities came to be of great importance for the artists, as well as for the development of Swedish art – and for which works that are found today in the Moderna Museet Collection.
One of these influential networks arose in Berlin, around the Swedish artist Nell Walden and her husband Herwarth Walden. Together, they ran the publication Der Sturm in the 1910s and 1920s, featuring the aesthetic of the new era. Numerous writers and artists contributed to the magazine, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter. Through exhibitions of the international avant-garde the Waldens worked to promote modernism at their own gallery in Berlin, Der Sturm, and in Scandinavia.
Sigrid Hjertén, Isaac Grünewald and Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN) were among the Swedish artists who were shown at the Berlin gallery. As a young man, GAN was deeply influenced by the city of Berlin and the art he saw at Der Sturm. Nell Walden’s own works were also frequently exhibited at Der Sturm’s gallery. With her abstract imagery, occasionally inspired by organic shapes, she developed a style of bold colours and expression.
THE COLLECTOR AND THE VISIONARY ROLF DE MARÉ Rolf de Maré (1888–1964) acquired the first works for his art collection in 1914. Eventually, it came to include many works by innovative artists of the period. He was assisted in his choices by his friend, the Swedish painter Nils Dardel, who had cultivated a large circle of friends among artists and art dealers in Paris in the 1910s. Dardel introduced de Maré to the art dealers Wilhelm Uhde and Alfred Flechtheim, both of whom had been early to discover the international avant-garde. As a grandson of Wilhelmina von Hallwyl, founder of the Hallwyl Museum in Stockholm, Rolf de Maré had a considerable fortune and could realize his magnificent visions. One of these was to set up the groundbreaking ensemble the Swedish Ballet in Paris, Ballets Suédois, together with his partner, the dancer and choreographer Jean Börlin. During the first half of the 1920s, the dance company under de Maré’s leadership created experimental dance performances in collaboration with some of the most trailblazing visual artists, writers and composers of the time, including Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau and Erik Satie. In 1933, Rolf de Maré founded the world’s first museum of dance and dance research in the French capital. In the early 1950s, he inaugurated Dansmuseet in Stockholm.
Rolf de Maré was constantly derided in the Swedish sensationalist press for his norm-breaking lifestyle, and his art collection was ridiculed. Many years later, Rolf de Maré donated large parts of his collection to Moderna Museet. Thanks to this donation, Moderna Museet now owns several key works by the international avant-garde, including Pablo Picasso’s Guitar Player and many important paintings by Nils Dardel.
THE STOCKHOLM EXHIBITION The Stockholm Exhibition opened at Djurgårdsbrunnsviken in Stockholm on 16 May 1930. Inspired by the large world fairs, it was a tribute to industrial development and also introduced functionalism in Sweden on a broad front. Visions of the future, with new apartment buildings where light and air could flow freely were shown, and the idea that good design was conducive to social progress was central.
At Café Puck, a restaurant at the Stockholm Exhibition, 107 works of art were presented under the heading “International Exhibition of Post-Cubist Art”. The contemporary avant-garde jostled for wall space in crowded rows, and several artists were shown for the first time in Sweden. The art exhibition was organized by Swedish artist Otto G. Carlsund who, with his large network, had managed to gather works by Le Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant and Fernand Léger, among others. The press had mixed reactions to the non-figurative imagery, and the public was emphatically negative – only a few works were sold.
With its extensive scale and varied content of ideas, the Stockholm exhibition mirrored the many faces of modernism. As Carlsund opened the door to the world and invited international art, the Stockholm exhi¬bition also reflected a different spirit of the times. A separate building housed the display “Svea rike”, with a racial biology section created by the doctor Herman Lundborg. Eight years earlier, he had been a driving force behind the establishing of the world’s first state racial biology institute, located in Uppsala. During the 1930s, general notions of “purity” appeared in both the rejection of the decorative in favor of the pure form, as well as in ideas about the functional home. In parallel, the racist visions of purity of the racial biologists reached right into the very genetics of the body.
