| Summary: | In the Finland-Swedish art historian and chef curator Bertel Hintze’s art historical handbook Modern konst: 1900-talet (Modern Art: Twentieth century), published in 1930, he introduce the Swedish artist Isaac Grünewald with a racial and anti-Semitic rhetoric. In this article Hintze’s rhetoric is analyzed in relation to a widespread everyday anti-Semitism and the language used in earlier art critical discussion on Grünewald’s art. The article concludes that earlier anti-Semitic expressions, visible in the negative and nationalistically oriented criticism, have been incorporated into Hintze’s ambivalent, but basically positive, characterization of Grünewald. In doing so Hintze translocate the anti-Semitic rhetoric from a negative and disparaging criticism into ‘normal’ art history, an example of how the voice of anti-Semitism have been built into the language and structure of Swedish art historiography, even where anti-Semitism was not the object.
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