Göteborgs konstmuseum | The Hjalmar Gabrielson Collection of Self-Portraits

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Here we present web exhibitions, some of which are, or have been, displayed at the museum, and some that are exclusively created for the web. A web exhibition comprises a text plus a list of works. From the list of works, you can click to the searchable database. This page will be updated continuously as new, differently themed web exhibitions become available.

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The Hjalmar Gabrielson Collection of Self-Portraits

Hjalmar Gabrielson’s collection of self-portraits was donated to the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 1950. It comprises self-portraits by a number of famous, chiefly Swedish and Nordic, artists, but the collection also contains internationally well-known names, such as Kurt Schwitters and Käthe Kollwitz.

Hjalmar Gabrielson (1876–1949) owned one of the most interesting private art collections in Sweden in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1909–1921, Gabrielson worked as a post-office clerk in Gothenburg, at which point he started to collect art but it was thanks to the fortune he made from successful real estate deals in Sweden and Germany that his collection expanded. In addition to a special collection of self-portraits, the collection included works by modern international artists such as Renoir, Cézanne, Chagall, Viking Eggeling, Kandinsky, Kurt Schwitters, El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy and Johannes Itten. Gabrielson’s art collection was exhibited in Sweden on a number of occasions, including at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 1949. After his death, the collection of self-portraits was donated to the Gothenburg Museum of Art by Gabrielson’s daughters Kerstin Graham and Stina Gretzer.

Self-portraits can be viewed from different perspectives; for example as explorations of an artist’s own identity. However, self-portraits do not necessarily reveal the artist’s “true self”. A self-portrait is always a staged image where the artist’s self and the artist’s role are constructed, deliberately or unintentionally. A contemporary parallel is how many people today present an image of themselves on the internet, where we can construct our lives and our identities as we wish to be perceived.

Few artistic genres are so intimately related to the artist’s role as the self-portrait. Hjalmar Gabrielson’s collection demonstrates how artists of the 1920s and the 1930s perceived themselves and their roles as artists. How do they differ from today’s artists? Of course, the collection also provides an insight into Gabrielson’s own view of the artist’s role. For example, one could discuss how the self-portraits in his collection depict gender and what consequences it has for how we regard artists today.

Works