The artist Nell Walden (originally Nelly Roslund) was born in 1887 in Landskrona. After studying in Sweden, she went on inspirational journeys around Europe. In Berlin, she got to know the artist and composer Herwarth Walden, founder of the magazine "Der Sturm". The two fell in love and married in 1912, this was the starting point for Nell’s artistic career.
Herwarth Walden also founded an avant garde art gallery with the same name, “Der sturm”. The gallery focused on expressionist art and exhibited artists from all over Europe in Berlin in the 1910s and 20s. "Der Sturm" introduced artists such as Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and Franz Marc and through the gallery, where Nell was a key figure, she came to know the most important European artists of the avant-garde.
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Herwarth Walden also founded an avant garde art gallery with the same name, “Der sturm”. The gallery focused on expressionist art and exhibited artists from all over Europe in Berlin in the 1910s and 20s. "Der Sturm" introduced artists such as Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, and Franz Marc and through the gallery, where Nell was a key figure, she came to know the most important European artists of the avant-garde.
"Der Sturm" was an important institution that helped to pedagogically introduce the new abstract expressionist art to a larger European audience. "Der Sturm" as a term was also used when artists were exhibited in other places around Europe, for example at Gummesons konsthandel in Stockholm in (1922). It was not just a gallery or an artists' association, but rather a kind of cross-border establishment that arranged exhibitions, had its own publishing house and a magazine based in Berlin.
With influences from, for example, Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky, Walden's artistry developed when she in 1916 was accepted as a student at "Der Sturm's" newly started school. Walden is considered the be first Nordic artist to paint abstract, which she did with strong colors and innovative boldness.
In 2017, an extensive collection of Nell Walden's paintings was exhibited at Mjellby Art Museum together with several other works by artists linked to Der Sturm from her personal, extensive art collection. Through both her art and her role on "Der Sturm", Nell Walden has played a major role in the development of modernism.
