PROGRAMME
We are in the planning phase to build a new museum in Södertälje, and have no permanent exhibition space.
Instead, we carry out exhibitions and projects in other places.
Grafikens Hus is a museum and a meeting place for contemporary printmaking, situated in Södertälje, Sweden. Our mission is to make the graphic arts and printmaking accessible to as many different people as possible. We want to examine printmaking as an art form and explore its boundaries, so as to take it forwards into the future. Through an innovative educational program, we want to invite audiences to experience printmaking in new and different ways. Driven by an ongoing curiosity, we follow everything that happens within the graphic arts and printmaking today – in Sweden as well as internationally.
Our work takes place through an ongoing project activity in a variety of settings, often in collaboration with other organizations and institutions. We are currently in the planning stages for building a new museum, with large flexible exhibition spaces and printmaking workshops within an old industrial building, a former foundry, in Södertälje. The area is currently undergoing an exciting transformation to become a new science park, where the arts, science and innovation will be brought together.
The museum was founded in 1996, as a result of several years of intensive work aimed at creating a centre for the graphic arts in Sweden. Led mainly by the Swedish artists Philip von Schantz, Nils G Stenqvist and Björn Lindroth, their shared vision was to create a place where visitors could go to experience contemporary graphic arts; to make artworks themselves and even to acquire art. This is a vision that the museum still upholds today. Throughout the years, the museum has produced a number of large exhibitions, with artists ranging from newly examined students from Sweden’s art colleges, to well known Swedish and international names, such as Linn Fernström, Pablo Picasso, Jesper Waldersten, Joan Miró, Lena Cronqvist, Lars Lerin, Karin Mamma Andersson and Jockum Nordström.
Previously located in the old royal barn near Gripsholms Castle in Mariefred, the museum with its entire art collection and workshop burnt down to the ground in March 2014. Following the fire, Grafikens Hus has been without a fixed location, but has kept its activities going through various c/o-operations, with workshops, print productions, podcasts, lectures, exhibitions and residency programs. As of the beginning of 2016, Grafikens Hus was re-established in Södertälje, where we continue to produce art projects and explore the possibilities of printmaking, whilst building a brand new museum.
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You can now buy exclusive editions of artworks produced by Grafikens Hus from our own webshop.