In the 20^th-century of Swedish art the Halmstad Group (Halmstadgruppen) is associated with post-cubism during the 1920s and the introduction of surrealism during the 1930s, and the group garnered much attention being from a small provincial town having an obvious relationship to international avant-garde movements. Even so, some critics seemed unable to consider them as a part of both a local and a international context. Irrespective of art movement the Halmstad Group was related to by art critics, it was often described in relation to ‘Swedish’ art, international movements, and to preconceived ideas about provincial places such as the city of Halmstad. The group exhibited extensively in Sweden during the 1930s, and a large number of articles and newspaper items were written about them. 

The reception of the group’s surrealism was as profoundly divergent, and this article intends to present how the surrealism of the Halmstad Group was met during the 1930s in terms of both Swedish cultural contexts and international modernist contexts.