Deep beneath the 14 islands which make up Stockholm, channelling the Baltic Sea into a collection of waterways, lies the world’s longest art exhibition. Starting at T-Centralen in the city centre before weaving out for 70 miles around the outer reaches of the commuter belt, the Stockholm metro acts as a continuous journey through the annals of five decades of European art history.



Through paintings, carvings, sculptures and mosaics, as the metro expanded outwards, it captured everything from political upheaval to post-modernism, while simultaneously reflecting Stockholm’s long-held fascination with the subterranean. This is, after all, a city which built the world’s deepest hotel, 500 feet below ground, in the murky tunnels of an old silver mine.

The idea of creating art in the metro stemmed from a debate which had raged since the end of the 19th century. Many felt art needed to be more accessible to the wider community instead of being a culture enjoyed solely in the boutique salons of Sweden’s elite.

It became reality in the late 1950s as part of a new political ideology known as Folkhemmet or “The People’s Home,” led by the Swedish Social Democratic party. While most of Europe was still recovering economically from the second world war, Sweden’s neutrality and high income-tax rates meant the Social Democrats had an abundance of money to fulfil their visions. Folkhemmet introduced a nationalised health service and a welfare state to Sweden for the first time, and instigated something of a cultural boom.

“The Social Democrats felt that art should not be isolated, but it should be part of Stockholm,” says Birgitta Muhr, a sculptor commissioned to work on the Högdalen station in 2002. “Stockholm was expanding at the time, with many people moving to the suburbs for work. A subway system needed to be created to connect the city, and they wanted art to come to every man and woman. There were lotteries in which you could win a collection of prints from a famous painter for a cheap price, and then they launched a competition to find artists to paint and create sculptures for T-Centralen.”

I hoped [the tulips] would plant a smile in the minds of the people waiting alongside them, even if just for a moment Brigitta Muhr

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brigitta Muhr’s 2.5m tall bronze tulips at Högdalen station. Photograph: Luis Rodriguez

A similar project had been launched on the Moscow metro 20 years earlier but, rather than pay homage to the imperial, primarily decorative art of Stalinist Russia, the original artists selected to work on Stockholm’s central cluster of subway stations found themselves inspired by the minimalist and abstract creations found increasingly in Paris and New York.

Among them was a painter and sculptor called Siri Derkert, a former leader of the Svenska Kvinnors Vänsterförbund, the Swedish Women’s Left-Wing Association. Derkert was commissioned to work on Östermalmstorg in the early 1960s, a station designed to serve as a shelter in case of nuclear attack. With cold war tensions reaching a peak surrounding the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, it seemed a realistic possibility.

An active campaigner and advocate for peace, women’s rights and the green movement, Derkert chose to insert her own messages into her creation. The walls of Östermalmstorg are filled with charcoal coloured drawings, drilled into the cement using a special sand-blasting technique to highlight them in an almost luminescent glow, 100 feet below ground. They show key female figures from history such as British writer Virginia Woolf and the mathematician Hypatia, who taught philosophy and astronomy in Ancient Greece, interspersed by repeated musical transcriptions from the French revolutionary song La Marseillaise.

As the 1970s dawned, a new wave of the metro was created to be filled with a far angrier, more radical artwork. At Solna Centrum, the blood-red night sky daubed across the roof of this cave-like station contrasts sharply with a spruce forest running for almost 1km along the walls. Painted by Anders Åberg and Karl-Olav Bjork in 1975, this almost demonic landscape has become of one the most iconic images of the Stockholm metro, a social statement against the rural depopulation and deforestation taking place in Sweden at the time.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Per Olof Ultvedt honoured the workers who built T-Centralen station in the 1970s by painting their silhouettes (and his own) on the walls and ceilings. Photograph: Luis Rodriguez

“Art was very political in Sweden in the 1970s,” says Fredrik Landegren, who painted the Fruängen station about a decade ago. “If there was not a strong message behind your work, there was little chance you’d be offered a job on the subway. But I think that was the case with art throughout Europe. It changed in the 1980s when things became much more about individualism and later post-modernism.”

By the 1990s, the focus had shifted to improving forgotten stations at the ends of the lines where artwork had yet to be installed. When Muhr entered a competition to create a sculpture for Högdalen, she was struck by its isolation.

“Högdalen is an outdoor station with a big park on one side and a main road on the other,” she explains. “It’s quite windy and lonely there, apart from at rush hour. Subway stations can be rough areas at night so I wanted to put some company on the platform. I decided to make these tulips in bronze. They’re designed so it appears they’re also waiting for the next train. I hoped that would plant a little smile in the minds of the people waiting alongside them, even if just for a fleeting moment.”

Landegren was likewise captured by the idea of creating a warmer environment for the waiting passengers. His initial inspiration for Fruängen came from sitting in his kitchen at home. “Before I started, this station was such a terrible place to be, entirely grey. And so I was looking at the textiles on my kitchen table and I realised that they really encapsulated the feeling of being home and being safe. And so I began with these bright patterns.”

Art was very political in Sweden in the 1970s Fredrik Landegren

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Solna Centrum’s murals by Anders Åberg and Karl-Olav Bjork feature a blood-red sky and spruce forest running for 1km along the walls. Photograph: Luis Rodriguez

But while many of the works across the metro have become perhaps somewhat dated, a time capsule of the era in which they were created, Landegren wanted to create something more enduring, which any passenger could relate to.

“It took me three years but I created these eight mosaics throughout the station, each representing a different phase of life,” he says. “It’s called Our Life Faces. I wanted people to live through this, so when they were young they would perhaps relate to the small boy, and then as they grew old they would recognise themselves once more. None of the mosaics have names. I wanted the faces to speak for themselves.”

Landegren’s life faces were inspired by his own family and scenes from films such as Madame Bovary. They include a baby, a small child, a young couple in love, a 30-year-old man, a couple divorcing and, finally, an old lady. “Her face seems to be both humble and full of wisdom, but also perhaps a little sad.”

The art of the Stockholm metro – in pictures Read more

Over the past half century, many artists have become iconic names throughout Sweden for their work on the Stockholm metro. But with fewer new stations being constructed, this vast exhibition of culture is slowly evolving. Older works are gradually being replaced and newer ones added.

The sculptor Christian Partos’ work on Hasselby Strand harked towards futuristic modes of transport in centuries to come. “It’s a bit science fiction,” he laughs. “I was dreaming of a transport system where you arrive at a station and get instantly teleported. And I created this storyline through mosaics where the initial trials, using lizards and other animals, go wrong and they’re left trapped in time on the walls.”

Landegren says that the continuous influx of new ideas that comes with every generation is part of what makes the metro so unique.

“I’m 57 and my work in Fruängen is 10 years old now,” he says. “As the decades unfold, you get these new layers of thought and expression. New and younger artists are emerging and what they’re doing is very different to my generation. The beauty of the subway is that you can start at T-Centralen, the beginning, which reminds us of where we have been, and then you journey outwards and experience how it evolves into different things. It’s time travel through Swedish art, almost like getting to know a fine wine.”

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