Einar Nerman and his brilliant ARt deco caricatures

Many great postcard artists from abroad are virtually unknown in Britain. One of the best and most original was the Swede Einar Nerman (1888-1983), who designed about 1,000 postcards. They were published in two sizes, the familiar 5 ½ x 3 ½ in, and the smaller 4.1 x 2.7 in, which was very common in Sweden at the time. A checklist of Nerman’s postcards containing many illustrations of his work was produced by Sonja Holmgren and Sten Schüssler and published in five parts by Upplands Vykortsförening in 1995. So who exactly was Nerman?

Early Life, Training, and the Stage

Born in 1888 in Norrköping, Sweden, Einar Nerman grew up to be a life-long lover of both the plastic and the performing arts. He studied painting first in Stockholm and then in Paris under Henri Matisse who, however, proved to be a rather disappointing teacher whose most constructive criticism of his student’s work seems to have been an occasional “pas mal”. But painting was only one of the interests Nerman pursued. He also studied dance in Nyköping, and in 1919 actually went to London, not as a painter but as a ballet dancer to perform at the London Coliseum. Yet after a short while he found that the work didn’t suit him and he returned to his native Sweden.

In 1919, Nerman travelled to London — not as a painter, but as a ballet dancer, to perform at the London Coliseum.

The London Years, 1921–1930

Two years later, however, Einar Nerman was back in London, on invitation of the great entertainer and “Keep the Home Fires Burning” composer Ivor Novello, who had met Nerman when he visited Stockholm in 1918 to sing in a nightclub called Rolf’s Cabaret. He was impressed by the décor, which, it turned out, had been designed by Nerman, so he asked to be introduced to the artist with whom he quickly became friends. Novello persuaded him to try his luck in London, so that in 1921 Nerman once more travelled to England, intending to stay only for a few months, which then grew into ten whole years.

A Lasting Record: Caught in the Act

The good news is that there is a book that contains many of Nerman’s black-and-white drawings of the time (John Barrymore, the young Fred Astaire, Gladys Cooper, Eleonora Duse, Maurice Ravel, Igor Strawinsky, George Bernard Shaw and many more) together with earlier drawings (showing, among others, Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan), and later ones from the years he would spend in America (e.g. Charles Laughton, John Gielgud, Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable, Alfred Hitchcock). The book is called Caught in the Act and was published in 1976 by Harrap, London. It is still quite easy to find and usually doesn’t cost more than a few pounds in second-hand book stores. (Try eBay or abebooks.com, you won’t regret it.) It also contains a brief but very informative foreword by Sandy Wilson (from which I’ve learned many of the details of Nerman’s life).

New York and the Final Years

In 1930 Nerman again returned to Sweden with his wife and three children and might have stayed there for good if not for the outbreak of World War II, which prompted him to leave his home country once again, this time for New York, where he spent the next ten years sketching the Hollywood greats for the New York Journal American. (A book with his drawings of film stars from that period appeared in 1946 under the apt title Caricature.)

The remaining years of his long life, from 1950 to 1983, he spent in Sweden, where today he, rather sadly, seems to be chiefly remembered for his design of the Solstickan matchbox, even though in 2005 Sweden honoured Greta Garbo on the 100th anniversary of her birth with a special stamp showing one of the caricatures that Nerman made of her.

In 2005, Sweden honoured Greta Garbo on the 100th anniversary of her birth with a postage stamp featuring one of Nerman’s caricatures of her.

Beyond Caricature: Children’s Books and Music

There are many reasons, however, for remembering Nerman. Beside creating thousands of caricatures of famous actors, film stars and artists, that are still as fresh as they were eighty years ago, Nerman illustrated several children’s books, among them Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales (The Swine Herd, and Thumbelina in the 1930s), the stories of Selma Lagerlöf (author of the wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson), an enchanting picture book called Journey to Gingerbread Land (1942), the collection Fairy Tales from the North (1946), and a marvellously inventive book crammed with puzzles, riddles, songs and games for children, called Let’s Play (1946). He also wrote songs and composed music, most notably for his older brother, the socialist leader Ture Nerman’s (1886-1969) poems.

An Art Deco Legacy

Last, not least, of course, he designed a vast number of postcards, most of them in the Art Deco style, characterised by heavily stylised human figures and clearly demarcated bright colour fields. But although he had an unmistakable liking for geometrical forms and symmetries, his work never appears mechanical.

In contrast to many other postcard artists who are classified as “Art Deco”, he didn’t care much for romantic and glamour subjects, and many of his designs have a wit and humour that gives them their particular charm and saves them from the artificiality and lifelessness to which other popular Art Deco artists too easily succumbed. They are, in short, truly and utterly enjoyable.

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