Notes

Pärlhöns by Swedish painter, draftsman and graphic artist Otte Sköld was originally exhibited at the watershed L’Exposition Internationale Des Arts Décoratifs Et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925, in the Swedish Pavilion. Since then it has been widely exhibited as an important example of his work in a number of retrospectives, most recently in Stockholm in 1998.

Sköld is credited with being central to introducing modernism to Swedish art.¹ As a young artist in 1914, Sköld spent time in Copenhagen soaking up the modern art scene there, which was much freer than its counterpart in Sweden. Later, from 1920, he spent a number of years in Paris where he painted some of his most important works.

In the 1910s, Sköld’s style was influenced by Cubism and had futuristic elements, but he later embraced The New Objectivity, a response with its roots in Germany challenging the Expressionism that dominated modern art at the time. The New Objectivity posed painstaking naturalism against what was seen as Expressionism’s tendencies towards romanticism and sentimentality. Whereas German practitioners such as Max Beckmann and Otto Dix represented Weimar society, Sköld focussed on the cafes and dance halls of Paris. He also painted highly detailed portraits, views from windows and still lifes, of which Pärlhöns is an exemplary case, employing techniques reminiscent of the Old Masters.

Sköld was also highly influential in Sweden as a teacher – he opened a painting school in 1929 – and later served as a professor at the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Later in his career, in 1950, he served as director of Nationalmuseum, and famously founded the Moderna Museet, Sweden’s new museum for 20^th Century art, which opened just before he died in 1958.

¹ Elgán, Elisabeth and Scobbie, Irene. (1995) Historical Dictionary of Sweden, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Page 35.

Provenance

Exhibited

Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm, Otte Sköld, 7 November 1998 to 10 January 1999, catalogue number 73

Moderna Museet, Stokholm, Otte Skölds, 1959

Exhibited in the Swedish Pavilion (Hall 2) at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris, 1925