Taking a wide perspective, the exhibition starts from the pre-modern era and the Arts and Crafts movement. The movement had a strong influence on the Bauhaus school, the symbol of modernism. The exhibition establishes a chronological continuum of modern design and creative work to the present day. The main focus is on the “golden age” of modernism from the 1910s to the late 1930s.

 

The exhibition prominently showcases modernism’s Nordic dimension, explaining that “Scandinavian design is generally regarded as modernistic, an image that derives from functional objects of the 1950s representing a simple design idiom and often of organic form.” The functional form became the established image of Finnish design.

 

Modernism arrived in Finland in the turn of the 1930s. In that decade, the renowned Finnish modernist architect Alvar Aalto designed some of his famous furniture, which were well received in the international scene but were still in low demand in the agrarian Finland. The progress of modernism in Finland was broken by World War II, and the style became part of everyday life only in the 1950s, the decade which was a “golden age” of Finnish design and brought to international fame a long list of Finnish designers.  

 

The Modern(ism) exhibition also addresses the significance of modernism for contemporary design in Finland through the most important and purebred examples of Finnish design from the 1960s to the present day. Contemporary Finnish design is showcased by an exhibit of chairs from 12 Finnish designers of different generations and from the past four decades. The chair exhibit has been curated by Harri Koskinen, a leading contemporary Finnish designer known for a strictly functional idiom.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a book comprised of essays on Finnish modern architecture and design as seen from the international perspective. The essays deal with the roles of textiles in interior design; furniture design and Alvar Aalto’s furniture in America; glass, which was in a central role in Finnish design export after World War II; and the idealistic living environment and its effect on consumption patterns in the Tapiola district from the 1950s to 1960s.