Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, "Badande (Sommarkväll)"

Modern Art + Design presents

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, "Badande (Sommarkväll)"

The 1924 Olympic Games in Paris inspired Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN) to create one of his larges works during his Paris years 1920-1925, the painting “Olympiad” (“The Javelin Thrower”), which sixty years later had the honour of adorning both exhibition poster and catalogue for GAN’s 100-year anniversary exhibition at Liljevalchs and Malmö Konsthall (the painting belongs to Kulturen in Lund). After his return to Lund in 1925, sports motifs reappear from time to time in his paintings, for e.g. in “The Football Player” (1926) and in the dynamic boxing painting “Knockout” (1927) as well as in later paintings such as “Cross-country Skier”(1935), “Rugby” (1935) and “Hockey Goalkeeper” (1942).

The origins of GAN's fascination with sportsmen and athletes goes back to his time in Berlin in 1913-14 and beyond. In the catalogue for the GAN exhibition at Mjellby Konstmuseum in Halmstad 2002, Jan Torsten Ahlstrand writes: “After moving back home to Lund in August 1914, GAN rented a room by Idrottsgatan at Väster, close to the sports fields, where he could conduct studies of muscular young men in movement. He was inspired to paint near-futuristic depictions of athletes, a high jumper, a shot putter and some football players [...] GAN was particularly attracted to the rough and combative sports such as football, boxing and rugby, seeing in them a symbol of the struggle for existence. Among his literary favourites was Jack London, whose Social Darwinist and Nietzschean-tinged novels had made a strong impression on him.”

GAN's interest in sports was multi-faceted. A hundred years ago, sport was a new and vital social phenomenon, which became part of emerging modern society. GAN, with his alert interest in what was current, became one of the first artists in Europe to paint sportsmen in a Modernist style.