Woodland Crematorium, Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm, Sweden, Second version: exterior perspective
Erik Gunnar Asplund
Swedish, 1885–1940
Unknown
A graphite drawing on tracing paper by Erik Gunnar Asplund that lays out an exterior perspective of the Woodland Crematorium, aiming to distill the building’s low, pavilion-like volumes and processional approach into a calm, measured image.
The long, low composition and delicate pencil lines create a hushed, ribbon-like view of terraces, a colonnaded pavilion and distant trees, so that you feel the building as a quiet procession through landscape rather than a detailed façade.
Asplund’s design helped redefine modern sacred architecture by combining classical proportion, functionalist clarity, and integration with nature, and it was central to Skogskyrkogården’s influential rethinking of cemetery design in 20th‑century modernism.
Medium
Graphite on tracing paper
Dimensions
10 1/4 x 24 3/4" (26 x 62.9 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller, Mrs. Gifford Phillips, Celeste and Armand P. Bartos, Mrs. S. I. Newhouse, Jr., and purchase
Accession
58.1990
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
