Stockholm's Sculptures I: Norrmalm & Kungsholmen

Anyone who travels around Stockholm today finds a permanent exhibition of art in Sweden. There are about 500 outdoor sculptures in Sweden's capital, which makes Stockholm an international art city. Among the artworks in Stockholm, there are works by classics and monumental sculptors. There are also more works by the modern sculptor generation. Swedish sculpture reflects the country's tensions between classical and modernity in a slower form.

The purpose of the monumental works of the 19th century and industrialism was not only decorative, but these served as national symbols of prestige. The 19th-century sculptors were much more bound in their work than today's free artists, and had strict directives from clients to follow, because statue was often placed in prestigious interactions with official urban architecture. In cities like Rome, Paris, and St. Petersburg, the language of power is built into the cityscape, and as a tourist in these cities, one easily shrinks in the face of all mighty triumphal arches and statues. In Sweden, the artistic greatness of the continent was never developed. Sweden's best royal monument, Bengt Fogelberg's Charles XIV Johan, Sergel’s Gustav III, and John Börjeson's Charles X Gustav, are in pure propaganda terms. After the turn of the century in 1900, more intimate sculptural ideals were introduced, and the craze for large statue art that was rooted in patriotic views of art had stopped. However still, a group of traditionalists was faithful to old sculpture and achieved results until the 1950s. But, the strong expression of modernism did not reach the young Swedish artists until after the end of World War II. After the war, abstract sculptures appeared at art exhibitions and in parks.

This documentary is a selection of Norrmalm & Kungshulmen’s public statues.