Self-Portraits - The Hjalmar Gabrielson Collection

Hjalmar Gabrielson’s self portrait collection was bequeathed to the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 1950. It contains self portraits by numerous well known artists—primarily from the Nordic countries, but also internationally renowned figures such as Kurt Schwitters and Käthe Kollwitz. Between 1909 and 1921, Gabrielson worked as a postal clerk in Gothenburg and began collecting art. It was, however, the fortune he acquired later in life that enabled him to expand his collection. In addition to the dedicated group of self portraits, he collected works by many major modernists, including Renoir, Cézanne, Chagall, Viking Eggeling, Kandinsky, and László Moholy Nagy. The collection was exhibited several times in Sweden, including at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in 1949. After Gabrielson’s death, a donation from one of his daughters ensured that the self portrait collection remained intact at the museum. Self portraits can be interpreted from multiple perspectives—for instance, as explorations of artistic identity. Yet self portraiture does not necessarily reveal an artist’s “true self”. These works are always a form of performance, shaped by both conscious and unconscious ideas about the self and the role of the artist. In this sense, they resemble the curated identities many of us present online today. Few artistic genres are as closely tied to the artist’s role as the self portrait. Gabrielson’s collection reveals how artists of the 1920s and 1930s viewed themselves and their profession. How do their self images differ from those of artists today? The collection also sheds light on Gabrielson’s own ideas about what an artist was. One may, for example, consider how the portraits address sex and gender—and what that means for whom we now recognize as an artist.