Wholehearted congratulations to Åke Axelsson, who received the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Major Stipend at a formal ceremony on 30 November. The occasion took place at the Riksdag Library, chosen by Åke Axelsson from his multitude of interior designs. The Major Stipend is awarded to a currently active artist who has demonstrated supreme artistic qualities that have greatly influenced consequent generations of artists.
The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s statement reads:
“The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Major Stipend 2016 goes to furniture designer and interior architect Åke Axelsson. He graduated from the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in 1957 and his career now spans six decades. His interiors and furniture are found throughout the entire country: in libraries, museums, institutions and schools. The new and old chambers in the Riksdag, the Riksdag Library, the Swedish Institute in Rome and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, are just some of the many buildings and rooms he has furnished and designed with a vast and distinctive artistic sensibility for the whole entity, materials and not least the building’s prior history and decors.
Not only one of our era’s foremost designers and architects, Åke Axelsson is also committed to Swedish craftsmanship and industry. As a manufacturer and partner in Gärsnäs, he has helped preserve craftsmanship in Småland and the use of Swedish beech. His strive for functionalistic simplicity and reduction has resulted in aesthetical and ethical dimensions, an attitude that has inspired many successive designers and producers.”