Lead, pigment and silver

Curators: Ragnar von Holten and Leif Wigh

“Art on paper”, along with “modernism” are the two factors that these works have in common. A variety of styles are covered, and even a supposedly “realistic” approach allows scope for a subjective interpretation of nature. (The Matisse students of the 1910s and the cubists, however, are shown separately, as part of the main exhibition.)

If we were to attempt to categorise these modernist sheets of paper into “isms”, we would have to start with the more or less cubist and geometric tendencies of the late 1920s, for instance as seen in the works of GAN or Carlsund, and set them against the new matter-of-factness of Fougstedt and Otte Sköld. Among those who worked with geometry of planes was the intriguing painter Bengt O Österblom, who wanted to develop monumental painting in this style, but never had the opportunity.

The supposedly realistic depiction of the new matter-of-factness relates to reality in the same way as Picasso’s “Classicism” à la Ingres. This clearly points to a closer proximity to the 1930s surrealism of the Halmstad Group than is evident at first glance.

This new matter-of-fact and 1930s surrealist “photographic” terseness in the perception of the figure can be contrasted with the different forms of expressionism. Two central artists in this context are Siri Derkert, represented here with drawings, and Vera Nilsson. One of the more noteworthy names among the later generation of expressionists is Evert Lundquist, who, however, often displays a preoccupation with Rembrandt in his dry-point engravings, while Carl Kylberg, another extremely sensitive draughtsman, can be called an expressionist mystic.

Constructivist and “non-figurative” tendencies of the post-war years were manifested by “1947 års män” (The Men of 1947), and most of the artists in the group – Olle Bonniér, Lage Lindell, Pierre Olofson, Karl-Axel Pehrson and Lennart Rodhe – came to have great impact on Swedish monumental painting and decoration. The same can be said of Olle Baertling, who has almost become synonymous with “concrete art” in the same way that the Gothenburg artist Nils Wedel is intimately associated with the concept of “abstraction”. The Hungarian Endre Nemes was enrolled as a teacher at the Valand College of Art in Gothenburg in the late 1940s, causing a break with the Swedish west coast painterly tradition that had reigned until then: “New Valand” became a concept – painting based on imagination, with a Central European idiom. As an (intentional) counterweight to constructivism, the surrealist group “Imaginisterna” was founded in Malmö in the late 1940s, comprising artists Max Walter Svanberg, C-O Hultén, Gösta Kriland and Anders Österlin.

This “modernist” medley of pictures ends appropriately with the painter and sculptor Torsten Renqvist, an exceptionally fascinating and edgy draughtsman.

Curator: Ragnar von Holten

Carl Gustaf Rosenberg
Know your country – photographs in the modernist era

It may have been the rapidly evolving industrialism of the 1900s, the new economic conditions, the development of the perpendicular city as a place to live in and a meeting place, that enticed visual artists, writers and others in society to covertly start looking back to the past. In the midst of the modernist, geometric construction of purity, a longing back to the old village community and farming the soil began to emerge. This was noticeable in that workers in industry were given opportunities to rent allotments on the city outskirts, more and more people built summer cottages in the Stockholm archipelago, and the big outdoor museum Skansen showed large audiences how people lived before, in the old agrarian society.

In a number of masterly photographs, the photographer Carl Gustaf Rosenberg (1883-1957) demonstrated his perspective on social development. Rosenberg had worked for many years with the Swedish Touring Club. In 1948, the daily broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet appointed him Best Swedish Photographer of 1947, as the first to win that prestigious title. The taciturn Rosenberg won the award for his well-composed studies of architecture, his city views and intense pictures of nature taken all over Sweden.

Rosenberg also portrayed the landscape and architecture peculiar to factories. He described their interiors as skilfully as he portrayed the contours of different landscapes, the narrow, winding dirt roads, the pastures that had been moulded over centuries by animals and humans. But he was equally aware of the new collective means of travel, the railroads, cars and aeroplanes. He also depicted the meeting between the old and the new, between horse carriages and passenger cars.

As the photographer of the Swedish Touring Club, he travelled around Sweden and took pictures of the open countryside of the south and the varied, hilly and often snow-laden landscapes of northern Sweden. He took his first photographs for the Swedish Touring Club in the early 1920s and continued until the 1950s. At times, he was accompanied by his sons, Carl Edward and Erik, both of whom became skilled photographers.

Carl Gustaf Rosenberg was the son of the painter Edward Rosenberg, and was born in Paris, France. His interest in the Swedish countryside was aroused at the turn of the 19th century by the unique approach of the members of the Swedish Artists’ Federation to their motif. In 1904-1905, he worked in New York as a photoengraver and photographer, before returning to Sweden. He tried his hand at different professions and was an agent for French cognac in Sweden for a while. At the end of the 1910s, he started photographing again and was an early press photographer for Vecko-Journalen and Hvar 8 Dag. In 1919, he was also employed by Nationalmuseum in Stockholm to reproduce paintings and sculptures in their collections. In 1923, his series of pictures from the County of Hälsingland was published in the yearbook of the Swedish Touring Club. This publication is particularly valuable for his essay on what it was like to travel around the hilly countryside on his bicycle with his heavy camera equipment on the luggage holder. Carl Gustaf Rosenberg did not dramatise his motifs, but combined the essential features that would persuade the viewer’s gaze to move around his photographic images. He was a man who walked alongside modernism, all the while maintaining his very own way of relating to it.

Curator: Leif Wigh