Design is served Sunnyside Up at LACMA’s "Living in a Modern Way"
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All images courtesy of LACMA, Decorative Arts and Design Council Fund
Designer Greta Magnusson Grossman couldn’t have known the profound impact her brand of Swedish modernism would have when it hit stateside in 1940, the year she set up shop in Beverly Hills. Her bullet-shaped lamps, teak and tweed seating and playful “atomic” room dividers were instantly popular, attracting attention from celebs like Greta Garbo and Joan Fontaine as well as from the budding California design community. Just a decade later, Grossman, firmly entrenched in the midcentury movement, observed that California design “is not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions…It has developed out of our preferences for living in a modern way.”
Greta Magnusson Grossman Above: Desk (with storage unit), 1952. Walnut, iron, formica. Below: Lamp, model 831, 1949. Iron, aluminum.
Just what were the conditions that inspired one of the most influential eras of 20th-century design? That’s what LACMA’s California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way investigates. It’s part of the Pacific Standard Time series, an exploration of Southern California art on exhibition at over sixty different museums and galleries.
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