Modern Art & Design Presents the Gunnar Asplund Family Collection

The Gunnar Asplund Family Collection

For this autumn's live auction Modern Art & Design, Bukowskis have been entrusted with selling significant objects from the Asplund family's private collection. It comprises twelve lots from three generations: the architects Gunnar Asplund and Hans Asplund, and the diplomat and UN ambassador Bo Asplund.

Gunnar Asplund (1885-1940) is considered one of the most significant and leading architects during the interwar period, both in Sweden and internationally. Asplund is seen as one of the foremost representatives of 1920s Nordic classicism, with the Skandia Theatre (1922) and the Stockholm Public Library (1928) as prominent examples. He was also one of the pioneers of functionalism, which he introduced in Sweden with the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930, where he was the chief architect.

Gunnar's son Hans Asplund (1921-1994) also became a prominent architect, involved with the United Nations architectural office in New York, the Kooperativa Förbundet's architectural office and Nordiska Kompaniet during the 1940s and 50s. The present collection includes two armchairs designed by Hans Asplund for Nordiska Kompaniet's beauty salon around 1955.

All objects have since passed by inheritance to Hans' son Bo Asplund (1950-2024), a prominent diplomat and UN ambassador with international missions that took both himself and the present collection around the world. The six birch chairs with webbing seats that were designed by his grandfather Gunnar for the Stockholm Public LIbrary have served Bo well over the years. The collection also includes a copy of the "Senna" chair, the original of which Gunnar designed for the Swedish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition in 1925. Italian producer Cassina made a very limited edition in 1983, and the present chair is reportedly the very first produced in this edition and sent as a gift from Cassina to Hans Asplund. When Cassina premiered the new edition in Copenhagen, Hans was present. The chair then had a prominent place in Hans and his wife Ann Asplund's home at Grönegatan 32 in Lund, and when Hans passed away in 1994 it passed on to Bo.