Stockholm university

Research project Nell Walden, Der Sturm, and the Collaborative Cultures of Modern Art

Based on hitherto overlooked archival material, this research project studied Nell Walden’s significant impact on the Sturm organisation through a feminist reading of supportive labour that highlights the centrality of collaborative work within the modern art world.

The results of the project are published in the monograph Nell Walden, Der Sturm and the Collaborative Cultures of Modern Art (Routledge, 2021). The book introduces Walden as an ardent collector of modernist and indigenous art and critically contextualises her own art production in relation to gendered ideas on abstraction and decoration. Visual analyses highlight how she collaborated with artists and experimental photographers during the Weimar era. Finally, the book provides an analysis of Walden’s continuing collaborative work as Der Sturm’s archivist and historiographer after her voluntary exile from Germany to Switzerland in the 1930s and thus highlights the importance of women’s supportive labour for the canonisation and institutionalisation of modern art in museums and archives.

The project has been generously supported by Landskrona museum, Åke Wibergs Stiftelse, Magn. Bergvalls Stiftelse, and Stiftelsen Längmanska Kulturfonden.

 Wassily Kandinsky [1866-1944] Painting with White Form
Wassily Kandinsky [1866-1944] Painting with White Form. Kunstmuseum Den Haag – long-term loan from the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Project members

Project managers

Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe

Professor

Department of Culture and Aesthetics
Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe

Publications

News