GAN
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN)

in Swedish

The artist and writer Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, 1884 - 1965, is often referred to as an outsider. He created his own world and more and more people have learned to see what he saw..

GAN is a well-known artist whose work often appears at auctions. His life, work and place in art history are well documented by former museum director and GAN specialist Jan Torsten Ahlstrand, Viveca Bosson and others. This story aims to inspire its readers to learn more about GAN.

Who was GAN?

This section of a photo of GAN suggests through a reflection his dual nature. In his younger days a dandy, radical writer and artist. Homosexual in a time when this should be hidden. Admired and painted machines, sailors, uniforms, trains and the future.

GAN is considered one of the pioneers of Modernism in Swedish art. One of GAN's heroes in his youth was the writer Oscar Wilde. There is even a studio picture of GAN from 1908 where he looks like an elegant young man. But he soon became more of an angry young man who engaged in polemics against those who criticized his painting. The avant-garde artist from 1916-1919 went to Berlin to breathe fresh air. There he met, among others, Herwarth Walden - married to the a girl from Landskrona Nell Walden (IDstory) - who founded the radical magazine and gallery Der Sturm. In April 1915 GAN participated in the exhibition Schwedische Expressionisten at Der Sturm.

Among the canvases shown were paintings of trains and one of Lund Cathedral..

There are only a few works by GAN on the Internet and this is related to the rights to publish the artworks. Perhaps we will get permission to publish more artworks over time. Se atwork by GAN in this story ↓

After a short time in Berlin, Paris followed in 1920 and contact with Fernand Legér and the Cubists, among others. He published the book The Divine Geometry in 1922 and became friends with the Lund resident and silversmith Wiwen Nilsson. More about GAN's history↓

Where to find GAN's work?

In Lund you can visit Kulturen↗ and their permanent exihibition about Modernism. More places to see GAN's work ↓

A major exhibition of works by GAN was presented at Malmö Konstmuseum on June 5th  2011 - September 4, 2011 in cooperation with Waldemarsudde↗ in Stockholm.

Egon Östlund and the 'Halmstad group'

In 1914, GAN met Egon Östlund, who was then a young engineer at Motala Verkstad. He was a mentor to the Halmstad Group and introduced it to GAN. He was a significant art collector. His documents, including letters to and from GAN, are at the University Library in Lund, thanks to a donation from the Crafoord Foundation.

Viveka Bosson and the Halmstad group

From GAN's perspective, perhaps the order of the words above would have been reversed. Viveka is the daughter of the Halmstad group's Axel Olsson. In the book about GAN, she talks about both her meetings with GAN and his work. In 1956-57, Viveka Bosson was delving into GAN's work and French 20th-century art and visited GAN in his apartment in Stockholm. They met several times thereafter and corresponded with each other.

.. GAN was then quite bitter about never having been fairly appreciated in Sweden. My father, Erik Olson, had advised me to bring a bottle of whiskey and a couple of steaks that I cooked on a hot iron, juicy and bloody. That put him in a good mood. He told me that he drank milk every other day and whiskey every other day. That way he avoided getting arteriosclerosis and alcoholism, he thought. What happened with the latter is debatable. His language was powerful like his writing, both in letters and on the canvas, and he still had the poignancy and strength of his personality ... (Viveka Bosson from GAN, 2002)

Fernand Legér and others in Paris

At a time when you couldn't sit at home in Blålilla and stock up on high-resolution images even before the opening day, you had to travel quite a long way for inspiration. GAN moved to Paris in 1920 and lived there until 1925, with two longer stays in Sweden. He had a studio in the same house as Fernand Léger. GAN also met, among others, the Russian (Ukrainian) painter and sculptor Archipenko ↗ enW

An entertaining story within the story

In the book about GAN, the art dealer Kent Belenius writes (Galerie Bel'Art in Stockholm)

Edvin Ganborg (then Andersson) was torpedo firer no. 629 at the 2nd Fire Company of the Royal Navy when he met GAN for the first time in the spring of 1917. A story about this meeting has been told by Nils Lindgren: When GAN went down to the urinal at Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm to relieve himself, he saw a large sailor standing there. Suddenly three cavalrymen come down and exclaim: "The fleet shouldn't stand here and pee". A violent fight broke out, where the sailor Edvin swept all three down. GAN was so impressed by the strength, by the courage, that he decided to invite Edvin to Bern's that very evening. After dinner, they both walked home to GAN, where he showed his paintings. In 1917, GAN painted a "portrait" of Edvin (II Eld 629) and was inspired by him for some of his greatest sailor paintings. Around 1935 they resumed contact. Edvin had gone ashore, settled in Norrköping, married and had two children, Bengt and Elly. Shortly after the war, Edvin changed his name to Ganborg and for a couple of decades until the mid-1950s worked as a dealer of GAN's art in Norrköping, alongside his work as a machinist.

Kent Belenius has done a lot to spread knowledge about GAN in his own and other exhibitions..

One event that came to entertain many children was when he found the original paintings from 1920 for Little Olle's Journey at the home of Egon Östlund's son Olle. Lennart Hellsing wrote this children's book in 1984.

Text by Lennart Hellsing

This summer, this summer, in the beautiful days of summer, I'll set sail with it and around the world I'll go."

The largest public collection of GAN's work can be found atå Kulturen↗ in Lund. They are part of the Culture Museum's permanent Modernist exhibition. Individual works can be found at Malmö Museum, Waldemarsudde, Östergötlands Museum and a few others..

Publishing GAN's work is complicated, hence more links than images. See som artworks by GAN via Artnet↗ och the painting X at Östergötland's museum↗.

Literature about GAN

This book cover is a book from 2002 published by Mjellby Konstgård. An excellent source of knowledge, pictures and an important basis for this story. Authors are Jan Torsten Ahlstrand, Viveka Bosson and Kent Belenius. The book also contains a more extensive list of references.

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, GAN (1884 - 1965)
A Retrospective
Swedish, texts by Jan Torsten Ahlstrand and Oscar Reutersvärd
Liljevalchs Konsthall and Malmö Konsthall 1984.

Archive and old literature

At the University Library in Lund there are 2.8 shelve meters of archived documents by and about GAN. For example, letters, diaries, biography, manuscripts and photographs. Excerpts from Gan's diaries and from letters where Halmstadsgruppen's Axel Olson and Erik Olson write about GAN.

A few exhibitions

In Lund you can visit Kulturen and their permanent exihibition about Modernism.

Malmö Museum had a large GAN exhibitionin 2011 in cooperation with Waldemarsudde in Stockholm and their exhibition of GAN.

the Crafts Association in Lund (Fabriks- och Hantverksföreningen) celebrated 150 years in 1997. It was celebrated, among other things, by publishing a book containing several pictures of works by GAN that he painted directly on the walls in the 'Great Hall'. They bear names such as the morning, evening and pegasus and were painted in 1927 and renovated in 1987. The carpet on the floor in front of the fund painting is designed by GAN - (newly renovated and woven in Skåne Tågarp) - and in one of the corners contains a picture on what is or in any case could have inpired by Krognoshuset i Lund (IDstory). However, the central painting above - 'The life struggle' - is not a mural.

'The life struggle' is in contrast to the two essential women figures a male drama. GAN was fond of male sports, and the starting point is a (slightly older) painting of American football, where a cluster of athletes throws themselves forward after a ball. But to lift this prosaic drama to a symbolic level, GAN has removed the ball and placed his powerful male figures up in space in the light of dark cloud masses, where the sun is about to break. The American football match thus turns into a symbolic presentation of the struggle for existence, where the strongest triumphs ... (Ahlstrand, p. 67)

The text is interesting and once again shows the importance of a guide into a world to be read in a different way than how our eyes spontaneously interpret the image flow we today are flooded by.

This cover sets the stage for Kulturen's yearbook - Aspekter på Modernismen. The yearbook is an excellent introduction to what we have today chosen to call Modernism. In his preface, former cultural director Margareta Alin and 1st antiquarian Eva Kjerström Sjölin says ...

What characterizes Modernism: future beliefs, utopias, internationalism, the strong will to change, the conviction that with art can be changed society, the belief in a unit between art and life, the belief in the art of everyday life, the desire to demolish the walls between different arts, to affirm the impossible, to break boundaries ...

It is a bit tempting to make a comment about wether art today really has the effect that both the modernists and the prescription writers obviously believed and wanted to believe. But back to the yearbook. Jan Torsten Ahlstrand has written three articles: about ">The abstract and the geometric - GAN and Wiven Nilsson", "Modernism and the Middle Ages - GAN and Wiven Nilsson", "Modernity and sports - GAN as a unique Swedish example".

Here it can be noted that Wiven Nilsson is more famous than Karl Edvin Nilsson↗ although they are one and the same:-)

Among several other interesting articles are Cecilia Nelsons 'Synthesis of a city'.
The painting has the center of Lund as a motive, is owned by Lund municipality and can be viewed at Kulturen in Lund. Cecilia Nelso writes ...

The portal to the cathedral, a hungry open window, is located on the painting just below the center of the image area. It is distinctly illuminated and therefore acts as a point of view in the night depiction of Lund. Above the portal, the west facade and the towers rise; They seem to take holds and stretches backwards - upwards. The houses are crowded around the cathedral. The light of street lights illuminates the houses and the painting therefore gets a dramatic design with marked rhythm of light and darkness. The houses, chimneys and streets flare up and recess again in the dark. One would say: Lund seen from above, from a small aircraft that flies low and closely across the city and that makes it move in the direction of the aircraft.

This vivid description should attract many to visit the Kulturen's modernist exhibition. Imagine if Kulturen would even reproduce the painting on a larger postcard and post it on its website, so that we could, for example, be able to link to it right here.

Grave site

In his last resting place at Northern Cemetery in Lund, he blends well into the environment - see the grave site ↓. He also gets the last words in this IDstory.

Close-up of GAN's tombstone. In the foreground you see the parents Anna and Nils Nilsson's tombstones. The parents had a small shop at the intersection Trädgårdsgatan and Korsgatan.

One may note that the dates (1884 - 1965) are 'missing' and that GAN probably wished to have it thaat way.

Grave site at Norra kyrkogården in Lund

Gan was careful to be regarded as a painter and artist. Another of Lund's and Sweden's most famous artists - Carl Fredrik Hill (IDstory) - chose to put another epithet on his person on his tombstone.

A last word from GAN

In GAN's 'program declation', The devine geometry from 1921, the text below, which can also be read in the association Gamla Lund's yearbook from 2008.

Referenceas

• About BiBB, a media company and an encyclopedia 4.0
• Aspekter på Modernismen. Årsbok 1997. Kulturen i Lund.
• GAN; Mjellby konstgård 2002
• Artikel om GAN av Jan Torsten Ahlstrand i Fabriks- och Hantverksföreningens Jubileumsbok 1997, Bengt Karlsson
• GAN, Wikipedia
• Text/foto/webb: Johan Schlasberg

Published: 2010.06 Updated: 2025.06.14

Kategorier 20 Historiska personer 45 Lund 16

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