The retailer’s collaboration with the Swedish visual artist marks the first in a series of collections produced with Nordic-region creators
Words by Hugh Metcalf
Retail store ARKET, part of the Swedish-owned H&M Group, has revealed it will be launching a series of limited edition capsule collections, collaborating with artists, creators and tastemakers from the Nordic region.
As part of these ‘Nordic Stories’, the brand has worked with painter and graphic artist KG Nilson, best known for his seemingly simplistic, block colour artworks centred around the exploration of meaning in colour and the endless combinations and relationships they form with each other.
Influenced by artists such as Josef Albers and other members of the Bauhaus and concrete art movement, the collection draws on 7 original artworks from Nilson’s large archive – repetitive geometric compositions with a fondness for triangles and playful bird’s eye view maps of imagined places.
The collection bridges women and menswear, children’s clothes and home designs, including two lambswool blankets produced in collaboration with Swedish textile mill Klippans Yllefabrik.
For Nilson, a collaboration such as this, offers an exercise in making his art more accessible.
“It has always been important to me to make art available to as many people as possible, whether through public art or by crossing over to the worlds of craft and everyday design,” he says. “I think it’s amazing to see my own images materialised in an entirely new context and form.”
The 78-year-old Swedish artist has seen works on display previously at the Modern Museum and The National Museum in Stockholm, The British Museum in London and The Cabinet of Prints, Drawings and Photographs in Dresden.
‘The Colours of KG Nilson’ collection is available through the ARKET webshop now.
