Image: Sigrid Hjertén, Ateljéinteriör (Studio Interior), 1916, oil on canvas. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Photo: Åsa Lundén/Moderna Museet
‘Schwedische Moderne’ is described as the first comprehensive presentation of Swedish Modernism in Germany. Around 70 works from the collection will be shown, most of them for the first time in Germany. The exhibition is a cooperation between the Brücke-Museum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and addresses a chapter of the European avant-garde that remains little known in Germany.
The presentation follows the Brücke-Museum collection’s appearance in Stockholm in 2024, forming a second part that can show highlights from Moderna Museet in Berlin for the first time. Like the Brücke artists, young artists in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th century searched for new forms of expression, formed associations and opposed the established art world.
The exhibition focuses on the artist groups De Unga [The Young], De åtta [The Eight] and the Gothenburg Colourists, whose members sought to break away from fixed academic traditions and pursue new artistic paths. It examines both the groups’ shared aims and the diverse, independent artistic developments of their individual members.
Sigrid Hjertén receives particular attention: her paintings tell of life as a modern woman, artist, intellectual and mother, with all its complex facets. Progressive Swedish artists including Hjertén and Isaac Grünewald were shown at Berlin’s Galerie Der Sturm in 1915; the exhibition frames Swedish Expressionists’ current appearance in Berlin as a return after more than a century.
The presentation includes Hjertén’s ‘Ateljéinteriör’ from 1916, Grünewald’s ‘Lyftkranen’ from 1915 and Nils Dardel’s ‘Den döende dandyn’ from 1918.
