Carvings in Concrete
Siri Derkert carved images and texts about peace, women’s rights and the environment into the walls of Östermalmstorg underground station in Stockholm. Art you walk past on your way to work.
Look for portraits of women who fought for the vote and for peace – and for handwritten quotations.
Siri Derkert made the art at Östermalmstorg underground station in Stockholm in the first half of the 1960s, and the work was completed in 1965. Since the 1950s the stations of the Stockholm underground have been given artistic decoration, and the system is often called the world’s longest art exhibition. Derkert was then over seventy and an experienced artist with a strong political commitment.
The walls of the station are covered with images and texts carved, or rather sandblasted, into the concrete. There are portraits of women who fought for the vote, peace and equality. There are handwritten quotations, musical notation and signs associated with the peace movement and the campaign against nuclear weapons. The images flow into one another, and the lines are light and free, as in a sketchbook.
The composition is not divided into frames. The images and texts run along the walls so that travellers can read them bit by bit. It works like a long, continuous stream of thought. Anyone waiting for a train can discover new details every time.
The technique was new to Derkert. She drew the motifs at full scale, and the lines were then transferred to the concrete and blasted out with sand under high pressure. The result is pale lines in the grey concrete, reminiscent of rock carvings. Sandblasted concrete is durable and suits a station through which thousands of people pass every day.
The work is a clear political statement. Derkert was involved in the women’s movement and the peace movement and was an early voice of concern for the environment. The decision to highlight women in history was unusual in public art at the time. The title the work is often given, Carvings in Concrete, alludes to prehistoric rock carvings and to the idea of leaving traces for posterity. Among the women Derkert often returned to in her art was the writer and peace activist Elin Wägner, whom she admired. The station’s raw concrete walls gave her an unusual surface to work on, far from the format of the canvas.
Siri Derkert was born in 1888 and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. She led a varied life, often in straitened circumstances, and was a single mother of three. Her major breakthrough came late. In 1960 she had a large exhibition at the Moderna Museet, and in 1962 she represented Sweden at the Venice Biennale.
The station is today one of the best-known examples of public art in Stockholm. It has contributed to the image of the underground as an art museum below ground. Derkert’s work shows how public art can be both everyday and political, and how it can make room for people and ideas that are otherwise often missing from public spaces.