Gösta Adrian-Nilsson
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Hussars playing cards
Signed GAN. Executed in Paris, early 1920s. Paper panel 30 x 24 cm. Verso stamped: Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, 86 rue N. D. de Champs, Paris.
Provenance
Bukowski Auktioner AB, auction 521, Moderna höstauktionen, 7 November 2001, cat. no 32.
More information
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson was obsessed with uniformed men, primarily naval officers and hussars/cavalrymen. He admired "hussars and naval officers not only for the geometry of their uniforms," as Nils Lindgren wrote with a subtle understatement in the foreword to the GAN exhibition at the Lund Art Hall in 1977. The homoerotic encounters with uniformed men greatly inspired GAN's creative imagination – he himself testified to this in his diaries.
As early as 1918, GAN had executed two magnificent hussar paintings in Stockholm, titled "Blå husarer” and "Kavallerister." His two dynamic paintings of the royal guard parade in Stockholm from 1917-1918, featuring rhythmically marching blue lifeguards, belong to the same category of paintings with uniformed blue soldiers.
For five years, from 1920 to 1925, GAN lived in Paris with interruptions for two longer stays in Lund and Halmstad during the summers of 1922 and 1923. One Saturday evening in August 1923, he took the train to Malmö and visited Kungsparken's restaurant, where he listened to "hussar music." "I got intoxicated," GAN writes in his diary, "the lights shone, the music roared, young men in English clothes passed by" (the diary 24.8.1923). The erotic encounter with a hussar in the park afterward inspired GAN to create a series of hussar paintings: "I am alive!" he writes enthusiastically and continues, "Here, red and green unite against black, gray, white – and lemon-yellow cords and lemon-yellow buttons shine. Here is what it is. The most full of blood I have painted in a long time – because blood begets blood, strength expands strength" (the diary 29.8.1923).
Inspired by this nocturnal encounter (and perhaps more encounters), GAN painted several hussar paintings. These are paintings in the strict synthetic cubist style that GAN transitioned to in Paris after his fragmented kaleidoscopic style of the 1910s
Artist
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson is most notable as a visual artist, and he is a pioneer of Swedish modernism. He studied at the Tekniske Selskabs Skole in Copenhagen and later for Johan Rohde at Zahrtmann’s school in Copenhagen. As an avant-gardist, Nilsson was constantly searching for new influences. In Berlin, he was influenced by the circle around the radical magazine Der Sturm, through Kandinsky and och Franz Marc. In Paris through Fernand Legér and the artists in his circle. GAN was an eclectic in the positive sense of the word. He took the the artist styles of the 1900s and created new impressions. Symbolism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, constructivim and Theosophy were the colours occupying his internal pallet. He had a sharp eye for the masculine and his painting was often energized by the vitality of modern technology, vibrant eroticism, and echoes of tyrants. No other Swedish modern artist exhibits such a unique style.
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