Svensk malerkunst 1900—1940 — et led i forsvenskningen af Sverige

Abstract

The article deals with the contribution to make the Swedes Swedish among some early twentieth-century Swedish painters. These naivist and expressionist artists are regarded as being part of a new democratic-national culture. By means of two distinct styles: a cool, analytical and aristocratic one and a warm, synthetical and popular one they also represent a characteristic Swedish double matrix elsewhere seen in e.g. sport. This double representation of modern Swedishness function, the article argues, as an interpretation of crucial features in Swedish self-knowledge in the twentieth century. This double matrix is finally analysed as being epitomised in the paintings of Sven "X'et" Erixson, who due to this is seen as the most distinctive painter of the "heroic" social-democratic era in the inter-war period in Sweden.