Furniture designer and architect Greta Magnusson-Grossman (1906–1999), born on 1 January 1906 in Helsingborg, Sweden, enjoyed great success in both Europe and North America during her exceptionally productive forty-year career. She became known above all for her achievements in industrial design, interior design and architecture.
In the late 1920s, Grossman completed a one-year carpentry apprenticeship in her Swedish home town of Helsingborg. She was awarded a scholarship that allowed her to enrol at Konstfack (then known as Högre Konstindustriella Skolan), the renowned Stockholm art school. There she excelled at technical drawing and turned her attention to furniture, textiles and ceramics.
In 1933, Grossman became the first woman ever to win second prize for furniture design from the Stockholm Craft Association. That same year, Grossman and her Konstfack classmate Erik Ullrich opened a studio, shop and workshop in Stockholm. In her studio, Greta Magnusson-Grossman took on numerous commissions to design unique furniture and interiors, earning plenty of praise and press attention.
In 1934, she received an award from the Swedish Society of Industrial Design and a scholarship to travel across Europe.
She regularly exhibited her designs at Galerie Moderne, a cultural hotspot in Stockholm at the time. An important milestone for Grossman came in 1937, when she designed a cot for the Swedish Princess Birgitta. It once again attracted a lot of press attention and gave her access to a major group exhibition at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
In 1933, she also married the bandleader Billy Grossman, with whom she emigrated to the United States in 1940. They settled in Los Angeles, where she opened a new design studio for modern Swedish furniture, lights and accessories.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Grossman exhibited her designs at various museums around the world, including MoMA in New York and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Her most iconic products from this period are the "Gräshoppa" floor lamp and the "Cobra" floor and table lamp. The "Gräshoppa" was first produced in 1947. This three-legged floor lamp is one of the most important works by the Swedish-American designer.
She was inspired by Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, but fortunately never abandoned her personal style. In 1950, the "Cobra" won the Good Design Award and was then exhibited at the Good Design Show at the Museum of Modern Art.
Over the next 20 years, Magnusson-Grossman produced work for companies such as Glenn of California, Sherman Bertram, Martin/Brattrud and Modern Line. Her work for Glenn of California is considered her best known and most refined.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Grossman's designs featured in numerous international exhibitions, for example at the Nationalmuseum (Stockholm, Sweden), Röhsska Museet (Gothenburg, Sweden), Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, USA) and the de Young Museum (San Francisco, USA). Many articles about her work were published in the USA, the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Sweden.
Greta Magnusson-Grossman also taught industrial design courses at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Art Center School in Los Angeles.
Between 1949 and 1959, Greta Magnusson-Grossman designed at least 14 private homes in Los Angeles, one in San Francisco and one in her native Sweden. At least 10 of these houses are still standing. Both her architecture and her design work were widely featured and illustrated in Arts & Architecture, a magazine published by John Entenza.
She retired in the late 1960s. Today, Grossman's distinctive, modern classic designs are still collected worldwide and sold at auction.
Greta Magnusson-Grossman died in 1999.
