The Art World: Gösta Adrian-Nilsson

Gosta Adrian-Nilsson is primarily known as a painter, a pioneer in Swedish modernism. He studied at the Technical Selskabs Skole in Copenhagen and then Johan Rohde at Zahrtmanns School in Copenhagen.

Jan Torsten Ahlstrand writes: "The life-changing experience for GAN was Erster Deutscher Herbst Salon, organized by Herwarth Walden in Berlin in autumn 1913 with 85 artists from 12 countries and 366 works." ("GAN the great outsider of Swedish modernism," Mjelllby art farm / Halmstad Group Museum, Halmstad 2002). GAN now completely abandoned his earlier symbolist style and turned to a distinctly modernist painting with strong contemporary extension. The inspiration came from the Italian Futurists, the French Cubists and of Kandinsky and Franz Marc, whose paintings he had carefully studied in the Herwarth Walden's gallery "Der Sturm". The strongest impulses received GAN at the beginning of the Italian Futurists, and in the following years GAN developed a new way to portray the modern machine age and its aesthetics in his painting."