Signe often felt overawed by the social life of her school friends in Stockholm. It was so different from the Lund’s frugal family life. The Lunds were close friends of the Paues family who as diplomats lived in Brazil. They wanted their three children to go to Swedish schools and arranged for Johan, Elin and Nisse to spend the school year with a housekeeper on Valhallavägen close to where the Lunds lived. Signe was 12 when Elin joined her grade 5 class at Margaretaskolan and they became life-long friends. Signe and her sisters used to play with Elin and her brother Johan for hours in the woods and on Djurgården, right opposite their home on Valhallavägen.
She was one of the best at school sports but hated competition. Despite this she and Elin were both on the school netball team and won many competitions for their school. Signe preferred to take long walks in the archipelago with Elin and their friends. They would go out with a sandwich in one pocket and an apple in another chatting away or singing – often in harmony – as they walked, drinking in the beautiful natural surroundings of the Stockholm archipelago. They sang the old folk songs that were so “in” at the time. Songs by Evert Taube, Dan Andersson, Nils Herlin and others.
Signe loved these times but was wary of letting her friends get too close and at times she just froze and felt unable to respond, withdrawing and using Elin as her social shield. When she reached her teens, she became more aware and tried to understand the meaning of life. She was unable to express her struggles till much later when she found ways of expressing herself in writing and painting. Looking back Signe explained, ”As a child I fumbled and experienced a kind of frozen tundra within. The tundra continued to develop and was big and frightening. I felt like I was leading a double life because I couldn’t express it.”
When Signe was at home in the crowded apartment on Valhallavägen her double life took another form. The girls’ common bedroom was full of beds with little space to move between. They lived and did their homework there and life was full of noise and chatter. Signe couldn’t bear it. She simply didn’t fit in and couldn’t understand what was wrong with her or what to do about it. She became very critical and demanding and made the others behave in ways that made it easier for her to exist but she knew that she was unbearable for everyone else. She didn’t smile or laugh. She learnt later that her parents considered taking her to a psychiatrist – but they didn’t. Everyone was loving towards her but she was unable to love back and felt absolutely miserable. She made herself a little den in the apartment hallway where she could close the doors and sit. If anyone disturbed her or wanted to pass her to go to the bathroom she would show her irritation. She had hogged the family’s only crystal radio set which was very new in those days. She had a bad conscience and knew that she was behaving atrociously but still she acted out in desperation.
Kjell and Aagot were frugal and rarely spent money on luxuries preferring to invest in their children’s education and their family life.
The Lunds often rented rooms at an old vicarage close to where their friends the Paues had a summer cottage: Stugan at Nässundet near Kristinehamn I Värmland. Their children spent their summers together in and around the lake.
The Paues had made a float on pontoons which was perfect for diving, water fights and other swimming adventures. In August they put out crayfish nets in the evening and the older ones got up early next morning to empty them. Signe slept in the Paues barn with some younger cousins and didn’t want to wake the others early, so they tied a string around her big toe and hung the string out through the window. Johan came and pulled the string in the morning so that she would know when to come and row out to the island to empty the nets.
During the summer of 1928 a company of German boy scouts camped in three tents on the vicarage grounds. They sang marching songs wherever they went and the scouts invited the Lunds and Paues children to join them a couple of times. Johan Paues became good friends with Hans, one of the scouts, and he invited Hans to come again the following summer as an exchange student. Johan was 16, Elin 14 and Signe and Hans were 15 years old. Signe was shyly in love with Hans and had a feeling that Hans was in love with her too but in those days this wasn’t anything you talked about.
The Paues had a little boat with an outboard motor that they called Baksmälla – literally translated the Hangover! They planned to take a picnic to two nearby small islands that they called England and America but Hans refused to go. The others couldn’t understand why but Hans remained in the cottage all day polishing his shoes and smartening his clothes with a military precision that was so different from the one he normally portrayed when he was having fun with the others.
Even at this age Hans was fully indoctrinated in anti-Semitism. He was convinced that Hitler was taking the best way forward for Germany. To help the country produce all they needed despite the destruction and depression that the Ist World War had created.
Hans was ideologically aware and flatly refused to visit these islands that represented the countries that traded Jewish businesses. He explained how Germany’s industry and commerce had been taken over by Jewish people and how Jewish doctors and lawyers owned everything in Germany.
Signe and Elin couldn’t understand how this very nice young man who was such fun to be with could harbour this hard attitude and hatred towards the Jewish people but his face would become stony and impenetrable whenever the subject was broached.
The Lunds’ encouraged their children’s gifts and wanted to provide them with an education that would prepare each of them to be able to take care of themselves in the future. But Signe had a hard time in school. At the time there was no way of knowing why. If she had lived in the 2020’s she might have been diagnosed with autism, depression or ADHD. It must have been a challenge for her parents to see her lagging in school despite her natural gifts and intelligence.
Signe’s teachers recognised that she was unable to concentrate unless she combined learning with drawing and they turned a blind eye to the little caricatures and portraits that she drew in class for Elin because they were a necessary means for Signe to learn. Elin kept many of these drawings throughout her life! It was through drawing, painting and writing short poems that Signe could express all that she was unable to say in words.
Luckily Signe had very perceptive parents who saw her talent as an artist. Her father kept a watchful eye and began to figure it out a plan when Signe was still young. Kjell patiently helped Signe with her school work and she remembered how, ”I would stand by his large desk while he patiently explained a mathematical equation that I just couldn’t grasp. I stood blinking back the tears of hopeless desperation as I felt I was a disappointment to both of us. I had a deep feeling of shame and inadequacy.”
One day towards the end of the second year of Swedish High School, Kjell suggested to Signe that she should go to art school. The memory was etched in her mind as he stood by the dining room window looking out and Signe was initially horrified. She didn’t think she had the ability or mentality to make use of an art education and would fail in art school too but Kjell believed in her and worked it out. He recognized that subjects like history, geography, mathematics, geometry and physics weren’t necessary for Signe to make her way in life. His idea was that Signe would learn commercial art and advertising. The fact was that as the eldest of four girls, the responsibility would fall on Signe to see that her sisters were taken care of should anything happen to their parents.
It was in fact a great relief to be offered to go to art school and she was ultimately thrilled at the offer. She was aware that she had many gifts that she had done nothing to achieve but it was a continual surprise every time her gifts manifested themselves inspite of her. But before taking this step she had to pass 2 school exams and this was serious marker in Signe’s life. She was so stressed that her nerves were frazzled and she couldn’t sleep. But she was above average in school and despite the nerves she made it in the end and started at Stockholm’s best art school, run by Otte Sköld, a wellknown artist. He taught many of Swedens most accomplished artists including some of the artists in the famous Halmstadgruppen.
It was a great privilege but Signe was scared stiff! She had natural talent but no experience of real art or how to achieve it and remembered “I had never painted with oil or charcoal. All these things were new to me and so I felt very frightened when I stepped into that studio.
“I was assigned to do a charcoal drawing without being given any instruction on how to do it. I was to draw a bust of a Greek god and make it look like one. I learnt later that there are methods to get the proportions right by getting the relationship between the eyes, nose and mouth right in a face, and between the face and the rest of the head and ears. But with no instructions I struggled and struggled.
Sköld came by and looked at her work and said, ‘No that isn’t the way!’ But he just pointed out what was wrong and still didn’t give specific instruction. When the rest of the students went out to lunch Signe stayed behind and worked. She wasn’t going to give up until she succeeded. But as she worked she noticed that her limbs had swollen. Her watchstrap was too tight so she took it off. Her shoes were too tight so she took them off. A glance in the mirror showed that her tongue and face had swollen.
And so Signe’s first art school experience had a sudden start and came to a sudden stop.
Lillan, Inger, Nussa and Signe
Their family doctor ordered rest and Signe spent some days alone with her father in the apartment at Vallhallavägen while the rest of the family were at Djurö in the archipelago. She tried her hand at cooking for her father and he took her out to eat at one of Djurgårdens’ old restaurants. She felt so proud of her efforts in what became special days for them both.
But this was not the first time that the stresses of daily life led her to get hives, like her mother and she often felt sick. When she rested the rash went away but it left her feeling weak at the knees and “gone” for a couple of days. This happened every time she exerted herself but the doctor had no solution. She recuperated and was able to join the family at Djurö after a few days.
That autumn, Signe started at another well-known art school, slightly bigger, run privately by an active artist. They put up a still life that the students were supposed to paint in oils. Signe had never painted in oils before. She didn’t know how to mix or treat the mediums or how to make the colours come to their full right. But here all she was required to do was to copy what she saw and she learnt a lot. In the evenings they had still life classes.
“We learnt to observe a figure running and see at what angle he leans forward, how far the ankle on the foot that touches the ground is removed from the bottom of his Adams’ apple in the little hollow. We learnt how to make a figure and its movement come to life. The models didn’t just stand still and we were supposed to catch the peak of the movement. We were then told to do a drawing as we remembered it. The teacher came round and judged the accuracy of our drawings. What I learnt was very useful and has been the base of my ability to observe and somehow to reproduce the essence of life as I saw it and recorded it.”
It soon became clear to Kjell that single art classes weren’t going to give Signe a way of earning a living and he managed to get her in to Konstfach, Stockholms art academy. This provided a two-year basic course in techniques, accuracy, and different degrees of mastery needed in the commercial world where her real talent as an artist began to emerge. During the first year Signe engaged fully and won most of the student competitions but she lost interest when the second year became repetition upon repetition.
The teachers wondered what had happened and why she no longer won the competitions, but she explained to her parents that she had already mastered what they taught and no longer found the work a challenge. Her father felt that the time had come for Signe to continue her art education abroad and have access to further possibilities. He had many business friends in Germany who provided him with valuable contacts. One such contact was a commercial artist who had successfully designed and carried out the interior design of a zeppelin, the ’big cigars’ that flew in the air at that time. He had a studio in Berlin where he took 10 to 15 students and Signe was invited to be one of his students.
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