/The Canon: Perspectives on Swedish Art Historiography/
Olle Olsson Hagalund is considered a naïvist, part of an art movement that appeared in Sweden in the 1910s. The naïvists pitted the amateurist and provincial against the schooled and international. By painting in the manner of children, untrained painters or the mentally ill, they aimed at a more direct, down to earth mode of expression. They often depicted their immediate surroundings, like Olle Olsson here with his Hagalund. The inspiration came from the so-called true naïve painters, unschooled amateurs such as the French customs officer Henri Rousseau.
Even though naïvism was incompatible with the utopian, modern and international agenda of modernism, it had a major impact in Sweden. Naïvism satisfied the need for a local alternative to international modernism.
/The Canon: Perspectives on Swedish Art Historiography/
