DOI issue:
Nr. 3-4
DOI article:Behr, Shulamith: Differencing modernism: Swedish women artists in early twentieth-century avant-garde culture
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49349#0476
462
Shulamith Behr
9. V. Nilsson: Grandmother and little
Girl 1925, oil on canvas, Moderna
Museet, Stockholm
painting Grandmother and Child of 1925 (ill. 9), the matrilineal line of heredity is sensi-
tively engaged with so that one can speak quite confidently of the primacy of kvinnokultur as
subject matter. The starkness of the silhouettes and broad treatment of the setting offers a foil
for the capturing of resemblance between the grey-haired elderly woman and three-year-old
blonde girl. Nilsson's ability to show close observation of the child's curiosity does not
forfeit the impact of the painting's flatness and the gestured markings of the facture.
Evidently women artists were not limited to modernist reinvention of the lesser genres of
landscape, still life, interiors and portraiture. In the case of Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), she
chose to remain unmarried, preferring instead to be an inspirational force among a group of
women. Both her social and working life were governed by her interest in esoteric religions;
in particular from 1908 onwards in Theosophy and Anthroposophy. The importance of Ru-
dolf Steiner's ideas to a growing audience of creative women throughout Northern Europe
and Scandinavia signified the appeal of a unifying belief at a time of increasing secularisa-
tion of religion. Although af Klint trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm
between 1882 and 1887 andjoined the Svenska konstndrinnorsfórening when it was establi-
shed in 1910, her abstractions were viewed privately within a small circle of women. For this
reason, art historians hesitate to include this artist within modernist discourse.40
Here, nevertheless, we can speak of an avant-garde subculture directed towards the
private sphere: one dominated by kvinnokultur in a social sense. The works proclaim their
autonomy and partake of a rhetoric of utopianism associated with spiritual evolution via
aesthetic means. The abandoning of the external object in af Klint's paintings and the
justification of this in her theoretical manuscript "Studier óver sjdlslivet" (1917-18) gives
eloquent testimony to the fact that modernism's history has yet to be written.
40 For further details, see: A. OHRNER, Hilma af Klint, [in:] Dictionary of Women Artists, pp. 784-6; F. LALANDER,
Sweden and Modernism - The Art of the 1910s, [in:] Scandinavian Modernism, p. 69.
Shulamith Behr
9. V. Nilsson: Grandmother and little
Girl 1925, oil on canvas, Moderna
Museet, Stockholm
painting Grandmother and Child of 1925 (ill. 9), the matrilineal line of heredity is sensi-
tively engaged with so that one can speak quite confidently of the primacy of kvinnokultur as
subject matter. The starkness of the silhouettes and broad treatment of the setting offers a foil
for the capturing of resemblance between the grey-haired elderly woman and three-year-old
blonde girl. Nilsson's ability to show close observation of the child's curiosity does not
forfeit the impact of the painting's flatness and the gestured markings of the facture.
Evidently women artists were not limited to modernist reinvention of the lesser genres of
landscape, still life, interiors and portraiture. In the case of Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), she
chose to remain unmarried, preferring instead to be an inspirational force among a group of
women. Both her social and working life were governed by her interest in esoteric religions;
in particular from 1908 onwards in Theosophy and Anthroposophy. The importance of Ru-
dolf Steiner's ideas to a growing audience of creative women throughout Northern Europe
and Scandinavia signified the appeal of a unifying belief at a time of increasing secularisa-
tion of religion. Although af Klint trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm
between 1882 and 1887 andjoined the Svenska konstndrinnorsfórening when it was establi-
shed in 1910, her abstractions were viewed privately within a small circle of women. For this
reason, art historians hesitate to include this artist within modernist discourse.40
Here, nevertheless, we can speak of an avant-garde subculture directed towards the
private sphere: one dominated by kvinnokultur in a social sense. The works proclaim their
autonomy and partake of a rhetoric of utopianism associated with spiritual evolution via
aesthetic means. The abandoning of the external object in af Klint's paintings and the
justification of this in her theoretical manuscript "Studier óver sjdlslivet" (1917-18) gives
eloquent testimony to the fact that modernism's history has yet to be written.
40 For further details, see: A. OHRNER, Hilma af Klint, [in:] Dictionary of Women Artists, pp. 784-6; F. LALANDER,
Sweden and Modernism - The Art of the 1910s, [in:] Scandinavian Modernism, p. 69.