Kommunikation (Communication)

Artist: Sven Hagmarker
Year created: 1981

Seven tall wooden and metal telephone poles stand in a circle outside Sanda Upper Secondary School in Jönköping. The artwork is called Kommunikation and is a reminder of how we used to talk to each other in the past – through a fixed phone in the home, connected via a single phone number, to others through a network of poles.

The seven poles are eight metres high and spaced two metres apart. They form a circle with a diameter of five metres, connected from their central point to a single pole eight metres to the south-east. The poles are spaced according to the ratio 5, 8, 13 – a number pattern that follows the golden ratio principle, which is said to promote harmony in both art and nature.

Today, the artwork is partly hidden behind a new building, but it continues to carry an important message about the importance of communication between people, both in the past and in the present.

About the artist

Sven Hagmarker (1917–2015) lived in Svarttorp outside Huskvarna. He studied at Gerlesborgsskolan, Konstvetenskapliga Institutet (Institute of Art) and Valand Academy in Gothenburg. As an artist, he worked mainly with oil and watercolour painting, often in Småland and on Öland.