"In the post-war decades, abstraction dominated the international art scene. Abstract was synonymous with modern, but abstraction was also regarded as a universal language that had refined art's actual content, consisting of colour and form relationships. On the basis of the exhibition history of Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg Art Gallery, Moderna Museet, and Liljevalchs Art Gallery for the period 1945-70, Kristoffer Arvidsson explores the concepts of what is national and international, culturally specific and universal in art. Which values and ideas were associated with abstract expression? Why was it so dominant and how could it so suddenly lose its interpretative prerogative in the early sixties?" --Back cover.