Carl Eldh’s Ataljemuseum

Art and architecture are often thought of as fundamentally different types of expression. The former is freer and more independent, while the shape of the latter is an effect of human needs for housing.

However, the concepts are not complete opposites, but engage with one another in a continuous and ever-changing way. 

Think of the changing of the seasons, how winter and summer appear to be one another’s opposites, but are in fact part of the same cycle, each one necessary for the realisation of the other. 

Carl Eldh was a Swedish sculptor, trained in Paris in the years around the turn of the last century, and greatly inspired by Auguste Rodin. 

After completing his education, he returned to Sweden and settled in Stockholm, where his work developed in the direction towards realism. 

Today, he is primarily remembered for his sculptures portraying prominent personalities of his time such as August Strindberg, Ernst Josephson, and King Oscar II. 

Lesser known is the fact that he also collaborated with many architects, including Ivar Tengbom, Erik Lallerstedt and Ragnar Östberg. 

Östberg gave him the prestigious assignment to create the sculptures that were to decorate Stockholm’s new City Hall (where today the Nobel Prize-dinner is held every year, in December). 

The City Hall was inaugurated on Midsummer’s Eve in 1923, after fifteen years of construction. When designing it, Östberg had been inspired by the Doge’s Palace in Venice, along with the belfry of the St. Mark’s Basilica (also in Venice). 

Stockholm’s City Hall is today known as the last great building project in Sweden where architects, artists, sculptors, welders, and other types of experts all came together to create a masterpiece, where the sum was larger than its independent parts. 

The building is a testimony to the idea that all artistic expressions, including art and architecture, are equal and part of the same creative universe. 

At Carl Eldh’s studio, preserved as a museum and overlooking a large lake just outside of Stockholm, you can see nearly five hundred of the artist’s original plaster casts and sculptures, as well as over 1000 sketches. 

Many of these works were planned as part of larger buildings or architectural plans, and as such, serve as a reminder that art and architecture have always engaged in a creative dialogue with one another, regardless of how we understand this relationship today. 

Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum