Magnus Olausson (red.), Eva-Lena Karlsson (red.)

Nationalmusei utställningskatalog, 636
ISBN:	9171007024
Hard cover:	240 pages
Published:	2004
Language:	swe

During his time in Rome, Johan Tobias Sergel found a circle of like-minded peers - young artists from various countries who had travelled to Italy to study antiquity and "nature'; that is, the visible reality that surrounded them. This alternating study of antiquity and nature formed the basis for Sergel's subsequent artistic development. This, as such, was by no means unique, but the young Swede's assiduous self-instruction, the company of his comrades and his compelling search for artistic expression led him to develop a personal, uncompromising and immediate formal idiom. Through Sergel's eyes and hands, antiquity once again acquired meaning, articulated in a sensually present form that was essentially without parallel in his day.

Sergel and his Roman circle constituted the theme of the exhibition with the same name, which was the result of a collaborative venture with the Musee du Louvre in Paris and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. During 2003 and 2004, these two museums showed the exhibition in a slightly different form, involving a larger number of works and with the emphasis on the period and the material terracotta, rather than on individual artists. In Stockholm, the focus was on Sergel, the aim being to make visible his central role on the European art scene of the period.

Authors: Ulf Cederlöf, Magnus Olausson, Solfrid Söderlind and Elisabeth Tebelius Murén

This book was published in conjunction with the exhibition “Sergel and his Roman Circle: European Terracottas 1760-1814”, Nationalmuseum 13 May – 29 August 2004.