Nell Walden

Nelly Anna Charlotta Walden (née Roslund; 29 December 1887 – 21 October 1975) was a Swedish painter, art collector, and writer.

Her father Frithiof Roslund was a military preacher, and her mother Hilda Smith came from an affluent Scottish family.

Walden became an imperative figure of Der Sturm (The Storm), a Berlin-based weekly journal founded by her husband in 1910, and its international network of artists who were then mostly obscure, progressive, and at times radical.

The gallery was a leading exhibition forum for avant-garde movements such as Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, and Constructivism in Germany during the 1910s and 1920s.

In 1913, the couple travelled to several European cities to meet modern artists and collect works for the exhibition Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, which opened under the auspices of Der Sturm in September of the same year.

The exhibition featured around 360 works of art of nearly 80 artists including, Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Umberto Boccioni, Marc Chagall, Jacoba van Heemskerck, and Paul Klee.

[5][6] During World War I, Walden worked as a translator and journalist, contributing articles in Swedish newspapers on the German cultural scene.

[7] Walden started her artistic career in 1915, making art on paper, reverse glass paintings, and working with oil.

Her artwork included abstract compositions, with emphasis on human and geometric forms, and occasional sketches of landscapes, greenery, and nature.

[1] The same year, she was elected as a member of the association Die Abstrakten – Internationale Vereinigung der Expressionisten, Futuristen, Kubisten und Konstruktivisten e.V.

Walden with her husband Herwarth Walden in 1915.
Walden with her husband Herwarth Walden at their apartment in Berlin in 1916