For Our Own Time – Negotiating Tradition, Modernity and the Avant-Garde at the Stockholm Exhibition 1930
In: A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950Search for other papers by Andrea Kollnitz in
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Abstract
The Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 has been seen as marking the breakthrough of functionalism and modernism in Sweden. It was a representative manifestation of innovative Swedish architecture and interior design as well as a programmatic attempt to establish a social democratic, politically conscious new aesthetics with the aim of improving everyday life in Sweden for every class. Asking in what ways the Stockholm Exhibition can be perceived as an avant-garde event, this essay investigates the exhibition’s programme in relation to its national and international reception. While initiated and first received in a spirit of revolutionary aesthetics and social change, the exhibition and its ideas were later pacified and socialised as part of the emerging Swedish welfare system and its national agendas.