Greta Magnusson Grossman
The Swede who shaped Californian modernism.
Greta Magnusson Grossman moved to Los Angeles in 1940 and designed lamps, furniture and houses. Her Grasshopper lamp is still in production.
Greta Magnusson Grossman was born in Helsingborg in 1906 into a family of joiners. She was apprenticed at a furniture factory and then studied at the Technical School in Stockholm, today's Konstfack. In the early 1930s she opened her own shop and workshop in Stockholm and attracted attention for her modern furniture. She was one of few women in the profession.
In 1933 she married the British jazz musician Billy Grossman. In 1940 the couple moved to Los Angeles, away from the war in Europe. There she opened a shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills and gained clients among the film stars. She quickly made a name for herself in Californian modernism and was presented as a representative of modern Swedish design.
From the late 1940s she designed lamps for the manufacturer Ralph O. Smith, among them the Grasshopper floor lamp with its long, slender legs and the Cobra lamp. Her furniture for Glenn of California in the 1950s combined walnut, black metal and light, slender lines. She also designed around ten houses in the Los Angeles area, often on steep sites with large glazed walls.
In the 1960s she withdrew from design and devoted herself to painting. When she died in 1999 she was almost forgotten. The Swedish Museum of Architecture in Stockholm held an exhibition about her in 2010, and a Danish company began producing her lamps again. Today she is regarded as an important pioneer of both Swedish and Californian modernism.