Josef Frank, Austrian architect, Jew, immigrant to Sweden, is one of the most prominent and also most controversial representatives of Swedish modernism. The exhibition in the Felleshus of the Nordic Embassies, “BEWARE OF GOOD TASTE! Design of Josef Frank, Architect and Outsider”, shows the life work of Frank, whose stays in Germany – especially in Berlin – had far-reaching consequences for his creative work.

Berlin, 1909:

Frank worked with the architect Bruno Möhring and during this period also met his future wife Anna Sebenius. In Germany he received his first big contract – to furnish the East Asian Museum in Cologne in 1912. He belonged to the young Viennese avant-garde who especially in the years following 1910 attracted international attention with their architecture, interior design and designs for furniture, textiles and lamps.

At the World Exposition in Paris 1925 he designed the competition entry of the Austrian company “Haus und Garten“. As sole Austrian, Josef Frank contributed to the exhibition “Die Wohnung“ 1927 in Stuttgart – and had a falling out with Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, whose views on home design he did not share.

In the beginning of the 1930s, when the climate of mounting anti-Semitism became too much for Anna Frank, she persuaded her husband to enter a cooperation with Estrid Ericson and her company Svenskt Tenn. In 1933 the Franks moved from Vienna to Stockholm, and Josef Frank continued the fruitful collaboration until his death in 1967.

Josef Frank is still today considered one of the leading designers of Svenskt Tenn, and international interest in him has even increased in recent decades. In particular, the younger generation interested in design has discovered the quality inherent in Frank’s inexhaustible creativity. One of the rediscoverers of Frank was the English-language design magazine “Wallpaper“ in the late 1990s. Josef Frank was an intellectual modernist who objected to all forms of conformity – and not least in the aesthetic design of the home ambience.

The exhibition has been made possible through the cooperation of the Swedish Embassy Berlin, the Jewish Museum Stockholm and Svenskt Tenn, Stockholm, with kind support by Galerie Jacksons (Berlin) and SKF Lubrication Solutions.