9 June 2022
Vidar Malmsten exhibition
Vidar Malmsten has a prominent place in the summer season on Kulturgatan in Bodafors. TRÄ ART 2022 (Wood Art, 2022), Vidar Malmsten and Utvald, Form i syd (Selected, Form i syd) share the space in the airy venues. The exhibitions are shown from 11 June to 18 September.
Vidar Malmsten (1924–1969) was the only one of Siv and Carl Malmsten’s five children that followed in his father’s footsteps. He became a furniture designer and interior architect. For many years he worked in his father’s drawing office, and several of the interiors designed in the 1960s were created by Vidar, since Carl wanted to wind down and spend more time at Capellagården, the school of craft and design that he had founded a few years earlier on Öland.
In Vidar’s design world, the creative hand, the handicraft touch, was always present, and he had for the time a strong commitment to environmental thinking, biodynamic cultivation, and local heritage preservation.
At home, Vidar liked to work with wood, making small animals and toys for the children. A romatic vein, a playfulness, and a longing for freedom beyond all trends can also be traced in his interior designs.
The artist Liselotte Malmsten (1922–2021), Vidar’s wife and co-worker, is also represented in the exhibition, which has been produced in collaboration with the Siv & Carl Malmsten Memorial Foundations Minne.
Most of the furniture and objects in the exhibition are on loan from Vidar and Liselotte’s home in Bergshamra, near Brunnsviken. But you can also see the chair Kaj, which is produced by Tre Sekel, and the rustic pine chair Lärka, which is being produced in connection with the exhibition, initially made to order by cabinet-maker Peter Hellqvist.
A highlight of the exhibition is the bureau Masur, designed by Vidar Malmsten in the early 1950s, and during spring 2022 crafted as a qualifying piece by Joakim Lindman Hirt at Malmsten’s school on Lidingö.
”’Kulturgatan’ is a back street and at the same time one of the most interesting areas of Bodafors”. This is how the two local enthusiasts Mikael Löfström and Leif Burman describe Magasinsgatan in Bodafors.
In the past few years, it has been transformed into a summer destination offering genuine furniture history, exclusive wood craft, exhibitions of contemporary furniture art, a unique intarsia workshop, as well as a café, with soup and freshly baked bread. Read more on kulturgatan.se.
Text: Dan Gordan