Art Bulletin of

NationalmuseumStockholm

Volume OM

Hans Gedda

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R aÉÅÉãÄÉê OMNP Ó PM j~êÅÜ OMNQ

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm,is published with generous support from theFriends of the Nationalmuseum.

The Nationalmuseum collaborates withSvenska Dagbladet, Fältman & Malménand Grand Hôtel Stockholm.

Items in the Acquisitions section are listedalphabetically by artists’ names, except in the caseof applied arts items, which are listed in order oftheir inventory numbers. Measurements are incentimetres – Height H, Breadth B, Depth D,Length L, Width W, and Diameter Diam.– except for those of drawings and prints, whichare given in millimetres.

Cover IllustrationAlexander Roslin (NTNUÓNTVP), The Artist and hisWife Marie Suzanne Giroust Portraying HenrikWilhelm Peill, NTST. Oil on canvas, NPN ñ VUKR cm.Donated by the Friends of the Nationalmuseum,Sophia Giesecke Fund, Axel Hirsch Fundand Mr Stefan Persson and Mrs Denise Persson.Nationalmuseum, åã TNQNK

PublisherMagdalena Gram

EditorJanna Herder

Editorial CommitteeMikael Ahlund, Magdalena Gram, Janna Herder,Helena Kåberg and Magnus Olausson.

PhotographsNatinalmuseum Photographic Studio/LinnAhlgren, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson,Cecilia Heisser, Bodil Karlsson, Per-Åke Persson,Sofia Persson and Hans Thorwid.

Picture EditorRikard Nordström

Photo Credits© Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig(p. NQ)© The Gothenburg Museum of Art/HosseinSehatlou (p. NU)© Malmö Art Museum/Andreas Rasmusson(p. OO)© Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York (p. OV)© RMN Grand Palais/Musée du Louvre,Paris/Hervé Lewandowski (p. PMF© The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles(Fig. QI p. PN)© RMN Grand Palais/Musée du Louvre,Paris/René-Gabriel Ojéda (Fig. RI p. PN)© Guilhem Scherf (p. PO)© Bridgeman/Institute of Arts, Detroit (p. PP)© Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris/Jean Tholance(p. PQ)© RMN Grand Palais/Musée du Louvre, Paris(p. PR)© Accademia Nazionale di San Luca,Rome/Mauro Coen (Figs, SI NM and NO,pp. NNQÓNNS)© Mikael Traung (Fig. T, p. NNQ)© Stockholm City Museum (p. NOP)http://www.stockholmskallan.se/Soksida/Post/?nid=319© Stockholm City Museum/Lennart afPetersens (p. NOQ)© http://www.genealogi.se/component/mtree/soedermanland/eskilstuna/a_zetherstroem_/22850?Itemid=604 (p. NOR)© http://www.genealogi.se/component/mtree/bohuslaen/marstrand/robert-dahlloefs-atelier/22851?Itemid=604 (p. NOT)

Every effort has been made by the publisher tocredit organizations and individuals with regardto the supply of photographs. Please notify thepublisher regarding corrections.

Graphic DesignBIGG

LayoutAgneta Bervokk

Translation and Language EditingGabriella Berggren and Martin Naylor.

PublicationsIngrid Lindell (Publications Manager),Janna Herder (Editor).

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is publishedannually and contains articles on the historyand theory of art relating to the collections ofthe Nationalmuseum.

NationalmuseumBox NSNTSëÉÓNMP OQ Stockholm, Swedenwww.nationalmuseum.se© Nationalmuseum and the authors

ISSN OMMNJVOPU

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showing the King’s hand firmly graspingthe hilt of his sword. The series was exhibit-ed again in OMNM, this time in TheBernadottes in Black and White at the Na-tionalmuseum. In the years leading up tothe current exhibition, these photographshave been complemented with a represen-tative selection of other portraits by HansGedda. The emphasis has been on people

tle, and consisted of ten photos from theseries made by Hans Gedda for King CarlXVI Gustaf’s RMth birthday in NVVS. It wasdonated by the Friends of the Nationalmu-seum. These photographs include boththe official image of His Majesty, and Ged-da’s own compositions. The latter includethe most radically innovative Swedish royalportraits from the NVMMs, such as the photo

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e~åë dÉÇÇ~ (b. NVQO) is one of themost innovative Swedish portrait photogra-phers of the OMth century. Over more thana decade of actively collecting photograph-ic portraits, the Swedish National PortraitGallery has incorporated PV works by Ged-da in the collection. The earliest acquisi-tion was made in OMMS, for the exhibitionKings in Black and White at Gripsholm Cas-

Hans Gedda

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Interior from the exhibition Hans Gedda, the entrance.

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who are active in the arts, but the collec-tion also includes a few politicians and in-dustrialists. Four self-portraits demonstratethe artist’s playfulness and experiments instaging himself in a variety of roles.

The exhibition Hans Gedda would havebeen impossible without the photograph-er’s great generosity. The Nationalmuseumhas had free access to his photo archives, hiscorrespondence, press cuttings and otherdocumentation. Gedda’s agent, Mia Bengts-son Plynning, has also given us invaluableassistance. The perception of Gedda’s pho-tographic imagery has been both broad-ened and deepened in the process. Previ-ously-published monographs were writteneither by authors of fiction (Lars Forsselland Bodil Malmsten) or journalists (BjörnNilsson).1 These books are obviously crucialto understandingGedda; in the case of Fors-sell and Malmsten, the texts are literaryworks of art in their own right. Hans Geddahimself has also published articles on hiswork, mainly focusing on the practical as-pects of photography.2 However, until now,we have lacked a more comprehensive arthistoric interpretation. Access to the materi-al in Gedda’s archives resulted in a cata-logue with the potential for a life after theexhibition. But that obviously does notmean that the last word has been said aboutGedda’s multifaceted oeuvre. Hopefully, itwill inspire even more studies.

The main emphasis of the exhibitionwas on Hans Gedda’s portraits. Frequentlypublished photos such as that of the authorTove Jansson (NVST) and Nelson Mandela(NVVM) weremixed with less well-known im-ages. The pictures of Mandela appeared onthe covers of magazines and newspapers allover the world after his death, which, coin-cidentally, was the day Hans Gedda’s exhi-bition opened. Among the more unknownfaces was a series of sensitive, charismaticportraits of anonymous older men, whowere photographed by Gedda in connec-tion with a commercial shoot for DockersJeans in the mid-NVVMs, shown here for thefirst time. In these portraits, Gedda shows aparticular kinship with the paintings of the

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Interior from the exhibition Hans Gedda, portraits of the leaders of the political parties inSweden in NVTS.

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Caravaggists in the parallel exhibition Mas-ters of Darkness. As with the NTth-centurymasters, the individual person emergesthrough the pictorial surface of Gedda’spowerful renderings.

Gedda’s portraits combine the typicalwith the unexpected. Often, the pho-tographs do not correspond with the stan-dard image of the person in question. In-stead, Gedda has occasionally presented anew version that has, in some cases, come toinfluence other photographers. The unex-pected expression in a portrait adds furtherdepth to our idea of the depicted person.Many of the photographs are characterisedby melancholic, not to say sad, undertones.In Charlie Drevstam’s documentary Genietfrån Flen (The Genius from Flen, OMNO),Hans Gedda comments that laughter is lesssuitable for portraits, since it tends to looklike a grimace, a grin.

One example of a paradoxical smilecould beHans Gedda’ portraits of Georg Ry-deberg (NVTN) for the magazine Femina. Inthe colour photos for the article, his smile isseductive yet not quite convincing. Since theoriginal for this is a small diapositive, it couldnot be shown in the exhibition, but is in-cluded in the catalogue. The exhibited pho-tograph, taken on the same occasion, in-stead shows a serious man – an image thatexudes loneliness and isolation. Is that ver-sion more true than the other? This is oneexample of how Hans Gedda frequently ap-proached portrait photography. Alongsidethe photos that adhered to the client’s re-quests and were subsequently chosen forpublication, Gedda would produce his ownseries according to his own mind. Some-times, the difference is subtle, sometimes as-tronomical. Even if portraits of the exhibitedpersons have been seen frequently in thepress, these were not necessarily the sameversions as those now exhibited by the Na-tionalmuseum, or the ones that Gedda him-self chooses for a presentation of his work.

To broaden the picture of Hans Gedda,the portraits are complemented with im-ages from the world of the circus and still-lifes. In addition, the exhibition features a

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Interior from the exhibitions Hans Gedda and Masters of Darkness. Hans Gedda’s portraits of elderly mennext to Domenico Fetti’s painting A Classical Poet Eåã STMUF.

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few early photos, in a photo journalisticstyle, taken by Gedda in the NVRMs in Flenwhere he grew up. These surprisingly ma-ture pictures, shot by a mere teenager, ledthe way into his later artistic oeuvre.

In recent years Hans Gedda has onlyengagedmarginally in portraits. In order toencompass Gedda’s current oeuvre, the ex-hibition showed a selection of his still-lifesand a closely-related sculpture, The Soloist.Here, we also find parallels with Caravaggistimagery, since the still-life evolved into apainterly subject in its own right in the ear-ly NTth century. In Hans Gedda’s photogra-phy, genres constantly merge with one an-other. Similarly, the line between differentparts of the exhibition is also blurred. Is, forinstance, the photo of a saw blade, a nailand a shard of glass a still life or a self-por-trait. One thing does not exclude the other,as Gedda’s photographs are constantlytranscending boundaries.

Nationalmusei utställningskatalog nr STM

(Nationalmuseum exhibition catalogue no. STM)

Editorial committee: Eva-Lena Karlsson, Ingrid

Lindell and Magnus Olausson

Graphic design: Patric Leo

ISBN: VTUJVNJTNMMJUQTJP (English edition)

ISBN: VTUJVNJTNMMJUQSJS (Swedish edition)

Notes:

N. Lars Forssell, Bilder bakom kulisserna,

Fotolitteratur T, Helsingborg NVUO; Björn Nilsson,

Hans Gedda. Nuets ikoner. The Icons of Our Time,

the Lucida series Scandinavian Photographers

Classic and Contemporary R, Stockholm NVUU;

Bodil Malmsten, Cirkus Circus Cirque, Stockholm

NVVR; Hans Gedda: Dead Plates, Stockholm OMNP.

O. Hans Gedda, “Hans Gedda lär dig ta bättre

porträtt”, in Bästa fototipsen, Guy Jamais (ed.),

published by Foto och Filmteknik, Stockholm

NVTU; Hans Gedda, “Hans Gedda. En hängiven

mörkrumsarbetare”, in I mörkrummet. Del OK

Bengt S. Eriksson. Gerry Johansson. Tuija Lindström.

Björn Andersson. Ralph Nykvist. Hans Gedda.

Hans Hammarskiöld, Fotolitteratur NN, Hans

Alenius (ed.), published by Aktuell fotografi,

Helsingborg NVUR.

Exhibition curators

Eva-Lena Karlsson and Magnus Olausson

Working committee

Anne Dahlström, Eva-Lena Karlsson and Magnus

Olausson

Exhibition designer

Henrik Widenheim

Lighting designer

Jan Gouiedo

Exhibition technology and installation

The Technical Department at Nationalmuseum,

under the supervision of Lennart Karlsson

Graphic design

Agneta Bervokk

CAD manager

Joakim E. Werning

Conservation

Karin Wretstrand and Nils Ahlner

Exhibition coordinator

Anne Dahlström

Education officer

Jeanette Rangner Jacobsson

Exhibition catalogue

Hans Gedda: The Third Eye (English edition);

Hans Gedda: Det tredje ögat (Swedish edition)

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Interior from the exhibition Hans Gedda, the still-lifes in the foreground.

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