Scandinavia sat out the First World War. While the rest of Europe tore itself apart, a style of design filled with hope and optimism was quickening in Sweden. When the war ended, in 1918, the Nordic countries emerged from their cocooned neutrality, and Sweden re-engaged the world with a fully formed new movement in art and design. The new style won global attention at a series of international expositions, culminating in Paris at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. And then, in 1930, the Swedes left it all behind. The movement they abandoned has been called “the Forgotten Modern,” but on the eve of its demise it was christened “Swedish Grace.” Celebrating the era—and the style—Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum has just opened the exhibition “Swedish Grace: Art and Design in 1920s Sweden.”
Scandinavian design entered the 20th century practicing a woolly version of the Arts and Crafts Movement, sometimes called “Viking Revival.” The new century brought industrialization, urbanization, and the first glimmers of Nordic social democracy to Sweden, changes that required a new visual vocabulary for everything from cups and saucers to civic architecture.
