GAN was a pioneer of Futurism and Cubism in Sweden and the exhibition features paintings, drawings, collages and sketches, lent by public institutions and private owners.
GAN (1884-1965) is known to be one of the most significant Swedish modernist painters, and in particular the most peculiar. By combining futurism, cubism and expressionism, he creates a unique style, a visual world as intense in its form as in its content. Modernity and electricity, dynamic power with pluralist perspective. The physical movement in his motives can be read as symbols of the time he appears in, but also as a movement of his inner life. His art shows what the reserved and homosexual GAN hides in his private life. His wild fantasies and desires take place on the canvas. The homoerotic gaze on male power and masculinity is lived out. GAN lived a double life, one life in his art and another life outside of art. His visual world is mysterious and cryptic, with hidden rebus symbols and allusions. It´s a world that is both exciting and challenging to try to interpret.
An exhibition which consists of about 90 works by GAN is shown at Malmö Art Museum. The exhibition is a historical odyssey of GAN's oeuvre; his early images of symbolist romantic spirit, the breakthrough in the 1910s with the moving kaleidoscopic paintings, 1920's spirituality and plane geometry. And finally, the surrealism, which keeps him busy from the 1930s until his death in 1965.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Prins Eugen Waldermarsudde in Stockholm, Malmö Art Museum and Norrköping Art Museum.
