What is the significance of surrealism in the Nordic countries? When does surrealism take shape in the region and what does it look like? How is surrealism received and what role does it play in different national cultures? In this symposium, scholars and curators present a range of different answers to those questions. Delving into topics from Paris-bound painter Greta Knutson-Tzara, to situationists approaching surrealism, to collage and comics, the papers approach surrealism in the Nordic countries as a rich and diverse phenomenon with surprising longevity.

In 1930s Denmark, painters gravitated around the journal Linien to promote surrealism, and the 1935 exhibition Kubisme=Surrealisme brought international surrealism to Copenhagen. In 1930s Sweden, the Halmstad Group rose to both national and international prominence, and later surrealist initiatives include the artist group the Imaginists formed in the late 1940s and the Surrealist Group of Stockholm with a start in the 1980s. In Iceland surrealism only took hold in the 1960s and was radicalized by the young Médusa group a decade later. And in Norway and Finland, surrealism has never taken the form of a movement, but has rather been an influence on a diverse cast of poets and painters.

This symposium on surrealism in the Nordic countries excavates these tendencies and presents new perspectives on artists, writers, collectors, and exhibitions.


PROGRAMME

Friday 5 May

10.30 Introduction

10.45–12.30 PANEL 1 – Exploring and Exhibiting Surrealism in Sweden

Martin Sundberg (Jönköping County Museum) – “Greta Knutson’s Fairy-Tale Surrealism”

Mats Jansson (University of Gothenburg) – “The Introduction of Surrealism in Sweden and the Case of Folke Dahlberg”

Erika Danker (Mjellby Art Museum) – “Exhibition as a Medium for New Perspectives: Mjellby Art Museum”

12.30 –14.00 LUNCH

14.00–15.45 PANEL 2 – Surrealism and Situationism in Denmark

Camilla Skovbjerg Paldam (Aarhus University) – “‘Common Humanity’: Sonja Ferlov Mancoba’s Intercultural Surrealism”

Per Stounbjerg (Aarhus University) – “The Construction of Surrealism in Danish Literary History”

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen) – “The Surrealism of the Situationists”

15.45–16.15 COFFEE

16.15–17.30 PANEL 3 – Predecessors and Collectors in Norway

Kari Brandtzaeg (Munch Museum) – “Rolf Stenersen (1899–1978) – a Forgotten Protagonist of Surrealism in Norway?”

Lars Toft-Eriksen (Munch Museum) – “The Automatism of Edvard Munch: A Case Study of the Symbolist Genealogy of Surrealism”


Saturday 6 May

10.30–12.15 PANEL 4 – Surrealism in Iceland and Finland

Solveig Gudmundsdottir (University of Iceland) – “Nocturnal Revelations: Notes on Surrealism and Esotericism in the Art of Alfreð Flóki”

Benedikt Hjartarson (University of Iceland) – “A Collective Adventure Called Surrealism: Tracing a Tradition of Youthful Revolt”

Harri Veivo (Université Caen Normandie) – “Jet-Lagged Surrealism in Finland”

12.15–13.30 LUNCH

13.30–14.45 PANEL 5 – The Halmstad Group and the Imaginists

Helen Fuchs (Halmstad University) – “The Decorative as a Surrealist Method in the Halmstad group”

Kristoffer Noheden (Stockholm University) – “The Persistence of Imaginism: Gudrun Åhlberg”

14.45–15.15 COFFEE

15.15–16.30 PANEL 6 – Visions and Margins

Andrea Kollnitz (Stockholm University) – “Surrealism as Other: On the Cases of Thea Ekström, Endre Nemes and Stellan Mörner”

Niklas Nenzén (Uppsala University) – ”The Pine Cone Man: John Andersson and Surrealism”

16.30–17.00 Concluding discussion