Sunday October 1, was a beautiful, sunny day with a high of 16C. Our destination for the day was the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art), located on the small island of Skeppsholmen. We also wanted to check out Svenskt Tenn, a famous Swedish Design shop.
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| We walked by the NK (Nordiska Kompaniet) department store, founded in 1902 |
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| Main view- it has a rotating neon sign- it's a city landmark |
We walked through Kungsträdgården (King's Garden), in Norrmalm, where lots of folks were enjoying the sun from the many cafés that line the park.
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| Fountains in the park |
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| Playing chess in the park |
We walked by The Great Synagogue of Stockholm located on a small street just off the Park. It was designed by a well-known architect Fredrik Scholander (1816-1881). Scholander became a full professor of architecture at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1848 and designed a number of important buildings in Stockholm. The Synagogue opened in 1870. It was preceded by two earlier synagogues located in the Old Town (1790-1870), where the Jewish Museum is located, and an even earlier location in the Old Town (1787-1790. The Jewish Community Library is located beneath the Synagogue.
The monument to the victims of the Holocaust has more than 8000 names of victims who were relatives of Swedish Jews. It was dedicated by the King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustav at the synagogue in 1998.
Entrance and Monument on the left |
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| Side view |
We walked down to the Harbour and past the Grand Hôtel, where we would go for a drink at the end of the day.
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| Grand Hôtel, 1874 |
The Grand Hôtel is next to the National Museum, which is located on the peninsula Blasieholmen. The present building opened in 1866, and is inspired by northern Italian Renaissance architecture. It was recently renovated between 2013-2018. We decided to take a pass, as we wanted to stay outside and had planned a late afternoon visit to the Moderna Museet.
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| National Museum |
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| Wonderful views from the Peninsula |
First, however, we wanted to pay a visit to Svenskt Tenn, the famous Swedish Design Store. Svenskt Tenn is an interior design company with a Design Studio, Café and retail store. The company was founded in 1924 by Estrid Ericson (1894-1981). When Estrid was 30 and a drawing teacher in the south-west of Sweden, she received an inheritance from her father. She started a new business centred on the production and sale of pewter handicrafts which she made with pewter artist Nils Fougstedt. Swedish Pewter or Svenskt Tenn, was a name that epitomized the times. In 1927, Ericson moved her business into its current premises. At the Stockholm Exposition in 1930, Svenskt Tenn expanded its activities with the launch of modern functional furniture. Ericson's interest in interior design gradually took precedence and in the beginning of the 1930s, Svenskt Tenn had become a leading interior design company.
The real breakthrough came with Austrian architect and designer Josef Frank (1885-1967), who was already well established internationally (he taught at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (1919-1925 and was a founding member of the Vienna Werkbund) when he emigrated from Vienna to Stockholm in 1933. Ericson recruited Josef Frank to the company in 1934. Ericson and Frank began a long and successful collaboration. They created a style influenced by Viennese elegance and Swedish functionalism. Frank left behind about 2000 furniture sketches and around 160 textile prints that are now kept in Svenskt Tenn's archives. About 100 of these sketches and prints are in production today.
In 1975, Ericson sold Svenskt Tenn to the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation. Ericson's artistic nature together will Josef Frank's timeless designs are still the foundation for Svenskt Tenn's interior design philosophy. Their conviction that a home should be an eclectic mix of old and new, of different styles, colours and prints is still valid today.
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| Outside of Svenskt Tenn-- a very large two-storied store and design studio |
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| Picture of Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank by Lennart Nilsson |
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| Crown in the middle of the bridge |
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| Views looking back on Östermalm neighbourhood |
There is a wonderful collection of outdoor art outside the Moderna Museet. The museum has one of Europe's finest collections of modern and contemporary art. It opened in 1958 in the adjoining building that is now ArkDes, Sweden's national centre for architecture and design (presently closed for renovations). The new Moderna Museet building, located beside the old building, was designed by the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, and was inaugurated in 1998.
There are a number of fabulous sculptures outside the Museum. The Fantastic Paradise, by Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely was originally created for Expo '67 in Montreal!! In The Fantastic Paradise, Saint Phalle's colourful, life-affirming female figures are set against Jean Tinquely's black, jagged, rattling machines. In the summer, some of the figures are set in motion, spurting water.
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| Wonderful figures in Paradise |
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| With the machines |
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| Very colourful |
There was also a wonderful Alexander Calder entitled
The Four Elements, 1961. Which of the four sculptures that represent air, water, earth and fire is for the beholder to decide. A miniature model of
The Four Elements was made in 1939, but a full-scale version was not built and installed on Skeppsholmen until 1961.
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| Magnificent Calder just outisde the Museum |
The museum is presently reconfiguring their collection into themes rather than chronologically. We saw three temporary exhibits. The first was:
Seven Rooms and a Garden- Rashid Johnson and the Moderna Museet Collection. The exhibit juxtaposes the practice of American conceptual artist and filmmaker Rashid Johnson (b. 1977 Chicago) with works from the Moderna Museet Collection. His point of departure is the relationship between the home as an intimate place, and the museum's presentation of its collection as a public space. Each room in the exhibition shows a different personal or artistic relationship between Johnson and the work of other artists. Blue is a key colour for Rashid: A spiritual colour, the colour of a bruise that is also the mark of healing and a colour that captures the shades of melancholy and joy in blues music.
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| Works from the collection- including Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly, Jackson Pollock, Niki de Sainte Phalle, Robert Rauschenberg on a steel grid |
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| Chair by Rashid Johnson, 2023 |
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| Rashid Johnson, Negro, 2001, part of the Museum's collection, placed on the backside of the steel grid. |
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| Rashid Johnson, Bruise Painting "Catch a Bad One", 2021, part of the Museum's collection |
Rashid Johnson brings in a different history of the ready-made through a photograph by Elliot Erwitt. Erwitt took the photograph in 1950 in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It offered black residents an economic and cultural sanctuary. City developers highlighted the area as a prime location for redevelopment. They eventually moved more than 8000 residents off the hill and into surrounding suburbs. The photograph shows a smiling young man standing by a tree, holding a gun to his head.
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| A different story of the photo as interpreted by Rashid Johnson |
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| Henri Matisse, Jazz, 1947, (he used a technique of cut-paper collage)--- displayed over a large bed and in the same room as a rotating program of film and video. Originally Jazz was published as a book. It is not about jazz, but mainly depicts scenes in the circus and the theatre. The title is a reference to Matisse's method: improvisation - a visual free style, in which cut papers were pinned down, moved around to explore their relationship. |
Two-faced Janus, by Louise Bourgeois is presented near a number of Bruise Paintings by Rashid Johnson. Janus is perhaps the most furtive of deities, his two faces look backward and forward at the same time. The motif of the "anxious man" has featured in Rashid Johnson's work for a number of years. In a new series of Bruise Paintings, Rashid manifests the figure in a range of black and blues.
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Louise Bourgeois (1911-1010, USA), Janus Fleuri, 1968
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Rashid Johnson, Bruise Painting "Get in Line", 1923, "A Jackson in Your House", 2023
and "The Waltz", 2023 |
The second exhibit was entitled: Pink Sails, which presents some of the artistic styles that existed in what is known as Swedish Modernism. The title is from Ragnar Sandberg's twilight scene Pink Sails from 1934. The exhibit highlights the first four decades of the 20th century, a time of great change and optimism but also two world wars.
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| Max Ernst (1891-1976, Germany), Human Figure, 1931 |
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| Salman Toor, (b. 1983, Pakistan), Night Park, 2022 |
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| Sven X-et Erixson (1899-1970 Sweden), The Painter's House, 1942. "Nature is blossoming, the artist is perched on a ladder, his wife Ingeborg digs in the vegetable patch. Their son is watering, while their daughter plays with her doll. But the idyll is disturbed by three warplanes in the sky. Europe is at war. X-et was well aware of the contrast between his protected life on the outskirts of Stockholm and the horrors of war. He was deeply committed to humanitarianism and equality". |
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| Edith Fischerström (1881-1967, Sweden), Götaverken, Göteborg, 1939. Woodcuts of the Gothenburg harbour and Götaverken, the world's largest shipyard at the time. She intimates the lull before the storm, WWII was looming. |
Artists Isaac Grünewald and Sigrid Hjertén married in 1911 and found a studio in the Slussen area in Stockholm. From there, they portrayed the emerging modern urban scene.
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| Sigrid Hjertén (1885-1948, Sweden), View of Slussen, 1919 |
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| Isaac Grünewald (1889-1946, Sweden), The Crane, 1915 |
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| Hilma af Klint (1862-1944, Sweden), The Dove, The UW Series, Group IX; Part II, No.13. She was one of many artists and writers' who were longing for other worlds and had a fascination with spirituality. |
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Ragnar Sandberg (1902-1972, Sweden), Pink Sails, 1934. Focus on colour, rapid brushwork, and shapes on the verge of dissolving.
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| Ragnar Sandberg, Children Swinging, 1940 |
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| Nell Walden (1887-1975, Sweden), Composition, 1917. She was long regarded as Sweden's first abstract artist, since the work of Hilma af Klint, made during the same period, was kept from the public eye. |
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| Nils Dardel (1888-1943, Sweden), Street in Senlis, 1913 |
The last exhibit we saw was entitled: Sleepless Nights: From the 1980s in the Moderna Museet Collection.
It was getting late, so I only took a few photographs. There were some wonderful Robert Mapplethorpe photos.
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| Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989 USA), Patti Smith, 1978 |
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Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, 1983
They were all very interesting exhibits. The Museum is in the process of changing the presentations of its collection, which will allow it to show more art over time. A thematic approach will replace the previous chronological format. We think this is a more nuanced approach and can pull different works from different times together. |
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| Outside the museum as we were leaving, just after 6:00 p.m. |
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| Can't get enough of the views |
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| Endless boats and spires |
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| View of the back of the Royal Palace on Gamla Stan (Old Town) where we were on Thursday |
It was then time to go to the Grand Hôtel for a drink. The Grand Hôtel opened in 1874 and was founded by Frenchman Jean-François Régis Cadier. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize laureates and their families have traditionally been guests at the hotel.
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| Stairway to the Lobby |
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| Gorgeous Cadier Bar |
We sat in the room next to the indoor bar with the views of the harbour. Most folks were sitting in this room as it was still light out.
It was another great day in Stockholm. It helped that we had blue skies for the entire time. Exploring Swedish design and modern art with the amazing views from the Harbour made for a perfect day. Drinks at the Grand Hotel was a relaxing way to end the day. We walked back to our apartment at around
8:00 p.m. Allan made mushroom scrambled eggs (with our chanterelles), green beans and a green salad. Chocolate for dessert.
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