Previous exhibitions
“Reflection is the first step towards art” - Tora Vega Holmström
10 September 2022 - 29 January 2023
This autumn, the Thiel Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in Stockholm since 1945 of the ground-breaking modernist Tora Vega Holmström (1880-1967). Her practice is dominated by powerful portraits and expressionist experiments. On a trip to Finland in 1912, Holmström experienced a colouristic liberation. In her own words, “Reflection is the first step towards art.” From then on, paintings such as Strangers (1913-14) and Outside a Music Cafe, Biskra (1929) earned the artist national renown, and even a small international breakthrough after they were shown in London and Paris.
This exhibition began with Carl Wilhelmson’s painting Målarinnor (1902) in our collection, an allegory on the gravity, uncertainty and battle of being an artist, portraying Holmström together with her student friends Adelheid von Schmiterlöw and Hanna Borrie. The trio, who had Wilhelmson as their teacher at the Valand Academy in Gothenburg, called themselves “The Three Musketeers”. Holmström is the only one of the three who was to make a career as an artist. This exhibition seeks to highlight an exciting oeuvre, relating it to, and commenting on, the collection of the Thiel Gallery, where only nine out of a hundred artists represented are women.
Läs merA Home
April 9 – August 21 2022
During an intense period at the previous turn of the century, Signe Maria and Ernest Thiel created one of Sweden’s finest and largest collections of Nordic contemporary art. When the collection outgrew the family’s apartment on Strandvägen, they commissioned the architect Ferdinand Boberg, to design the white palace on south Djurgården that is now the Thiel Gallery. The idea was to create a combined exhibition space and home in the main building, which was completed in 1907. In a conversation with Boberg, Thiel said: “I want a home decorated with paintings on all the walls, it should be pleasant, I want to live there.”
A Home looks at the Thiel Gallery’s origins as a residence and strives to explore and enhance its dual identity as a home and anart space. The theme is highlighted from a site-specific and contemporary perspective. In the spirit of the Thiels, we wanted to include contemporary art and have invited the following seven artists, who reflect in different ways on what a home is: Juan-Pedro Fabra Guemberena, Linda Hofvander, Lap-See Lam, Berit Lindfeldt, Sirous Namazi, Petronella Petander and Helene Schmitz.
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Simple Pleasures. The Painter Akke Kumlien
June 11 - November 6 2022
In 1946, the artist Akke Kumlien (1884–1949) was appointed curator of the Thiel Gallery, which meant that the museum also became his home. The family consisted of his wife in the second marriage, Anna Lena Kumlien, and the ten-year-old daughter Anne-Marie (Amie), who in adulthood would make a career as a politically engaged textile artist, then with the name Maria Adlercreutz.
The spacious studio room with windows to the north, which today houses the museum's café and restaurant, was prepared for an artist with an easel and paints. Akke Kumlien defended his identity as a free artist and when he received the press, he did so in a painter's coat rather than a tie and suit.
The exhibition Simple pleasures includes about fifty paintings, photographs and artist material and is the hitherto largest made with Akke Kumlien. The deposits come from a number of private individuals, the Roayal College of Arts, The Academy of Fine Arts and Moderna Museet. The exhibition is shown in a section next to the Salon upstairs, in the so-called Söderberg room and the passage outside.
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Carl Johan De Geer – The big misconception
Carl Johan De Geer began designing his imaginative and expressive large patterns in strong colours and contrasts in the early 1950s. They were a protest against the prevailing brownish, discreet style, and the aesthetic values he grew up with. He wanted to change society with colour and form.
The Individual and Spirituality
From Albert Edelfelt to Helene Schjerfbeck, works from the Gyllenberg Collection
This summer, key works from the Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Collection will be shown at the Thiel Gallery. Some of these works have never been shown outside Villa Gyllenberg in Helsinki, home to one of Finland’s finest private collections. While it is closed for refurbishment, its collection will be presented abroad.
Axel Törneman
Bohemia and modernity
Dramatic compositions and motifs in bright colours are characteristic of Axel Törneman’s (1880–1925) art. The paintings from his early period capture the spirit of the fin-de-siècle and were considered to represent a new decade. But he remained a bohemian, an outsider, whose escapades beyond the aesthetic framework are largely forgotten today.
Augusta Lundin
The First Fashion House in Sweden
The fashion world as we know it today emerged in Paris in the late 19th century. Fashion houses were established under the auspices of illustrious creators. Their business relied on a large network comprising spinners and weavers, textile merchants, dressmakers, illustrators and designers. In addition, there were fashion shows, fashion magazines and launch parties, department stores, boutiques and, last but not least, the customers who embraced the new styles and fads introduced by the fashion houses.
Hidden treasures from the Thiel Gallery collection
The magnificent rooms of the Thiel Gallery are always filled with art from around 1900 collected by the banker and patron of the arts Ernest Thiel. But this unique collection consists of nearly 900 works and there is not enough room to show everything in the building. More art is stored in the museum’s warehouse.
The Experimental Self: Edvard Munch’s Photography
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was one of the first artists to take “selfies.” He pursued photography as an experimental medium and himself as an experimental subject. He explored the dynamics of layered imagery; unexpected areas of blank, disunified, or undefined form; and shadows that replace living bodies. These effects mirrored his formal strategies in painting and graphic works. An amateur, he did not exhibit his photographs. Munch’s photographs have been dated to two periods, 1902 to 1910 and 1927 to the mid-1930s.
Gustav Vigeland
The power and feeling of sculpture
The human condition, eroticism, and melancholy were constant themes in the artistry of Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland (1869-1943). His sculptures are characterized by an intense harshness, often with dark and complex motives, and they portray the intricate nature of emotional life and human relations.
After living a Bohemian life in Europe in the 1890s, Vigeland came back to Norway to create portraits and innovative monuments during the beginning of the 20th-century. The last decade of his artistry was dominated by the immense project of the Vigeland installation in Frogner Park, Oslo – an installation that, to this day, still attracts a great number of visitors.
Hjalmar Söderberg and the Visual Arts
The author Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941) had a close relationship with the visual arts. The exhibition features works that highlight both the author’s view of himself, and the view other artists had of Söderberg. Books with ornaments made by the author and other objects that relate to the Söderberg are also displayed in the “Söderberg Room”, where the artist used to stay in difficult times.
Garden Tales
Contemporary Swedish Sculpture
The summer park exhibition presents three contemporary Swedish artists: Christian Andersson, Fia Backström och Linda Pedersen. They have in different ways challenged the history and tradition of ideas of the Thiel Gallery in an exhibition which evolves around activism, climate issues, virtual reality, changes of perspectives and fictive characters.
The Jobs Sisters – ceramics and textiles
A passion for prints and floral art
The two sisters Lisbet and Gocken Jobs created ceramics and textiles that made Swedish homes blossom during the post-war period. Wild flower bouquets covers ceramic dishes and tiles while lingon- and blueberries are arranged into decorative patterns applied onto hand printed textiles. Folk culture with midsummer celebrations, people cheering and musicians playing are also found among the Jobs sisters’ motives.
Ivan Aguéli. Painting and mysticism
Ivan Aguéli (1869–1917) and his paintings are part of the Swedish artistic avant garde. His landscapes and portraits are often small scale, yet the interplay of colors, light and nuances creates a sense of monumentality. Through the intimate paintings, Aguéli experimented with colour and form at the same time as he explored the spiritual dimensions of existence.
Inuti Thielska (Inside Thielska). Interpretations in Word and Images
The artwork and history of Thielska Galleriet are exciting and inspiring. Since spring 2016 Thielska Galleriet has been in a joint collaboration with the daily activity center Inuti Kungsholmen. Artists with intellectual disabilities have had the opportunity to work creatively on sight in Thielska Galleriet with inspiration from its collection and temporary exhibition.
Karin Frostenson. Present time, Past time, Dream time
The Thiel Gallery presents a retrospective and thematic exhibition with Karin Frostenson (b. 1946), with works from 1960–2018. Frostenson belongs to the early sixties generation of cross-border visual artists. She worked early on to include cartoons in her artistry and is particularly known for social-critical paintings and the work with the underground newspaper Puss. Together with, among others, Lars Hillersberg, Lena Svedberg and Carl-Johan de Geer, Karin Frostenson contributed with some fifty series and illustrations. References from advertising and commercial images are mixed with old photographs, satire, Japanese woodcuts and Western art history. Paintings of nature, portraits and satire are themes that link to the collections at the Thiel Gallery, but there is also a personal connection to the house as Karin Frostenson is the great grandchild of Ernest Thiel.
Tyra Kleen (1874–1951). Artist, vagabond, adventuress
Tyra Kleen (1874-1951) explored the world through her art. She belonged to the art scene in several European cities and portrayed ceremonial dance and drama in South East Asia. But she also found other spheres within literature, art and spirituality. Today, she stands out as a multifaceted artist who added a continental vein to Swedish fin de siècle art. Read more
Nudes. Agunbiade-Kolawole, Karlsson Rixon, Zorn
A nude study is an artistic representation of the naked human body. The body itself is the subject, in that the model performs an act by striking a pose. This exhibition explores and offers new perspectives on the tradition and art historic conventions of the nude.
In an entirely new series of photographic self-portraits, Karlsson Rixon poses for the camera with colleague Mario Fjell. In total earnest and with playfulness, the nude is presented in a new and unexpected way.
Elin Elfström & Emanuel Röhss – Installations in the Park
Elin Elfström and Emanuel Röhss are two artists who refer to popular culture in different ways. They often use simple materials but of distinctive character and descent. For the exhibition at Thielska Galleriet they have produced new work that relate to the site.
Sketches and models to a memorial. Gravitationel Ripples by Lea Porsager
Thielska Gallery presents sketches, texts, watercolors and models from the formation/development/ evolution/creation of Gravitational Ripples. The small exhibition will be open during the inauguration of the memorial on the 5th and 6th of June 2018.
When Japan came to Värmland. Japonism and the Rackstad Artists 1880–1920
This exhibition is about the Japanese influences on the Swedish fin-de-siècle art scene. It focuses on the Rackstad Group, an artist colony that grew around lake Racken in the Värmland region in Western Sweden, culminating in 1900. Artists and craftspeople mixed disciplines and genres with influences from Swedish, European and Japanese art. Paintings, woodcuts, ceramics, textiles and metalwork by artists such as Gustaf and Maja Fjæstad, Hilma Persson-Hjelm and Bror Lindh are shown here alongside Japanese art. Motifs, perspectives, techniques and materials reveal how profoundly the aesthetics of Swedish national romanticism are indebted to Japan.
Searching for something else. Figurines by Alexander Tallén
During the winter of 2017/2018, 6-8 of Swedish artist Alexander Tallén's (b. 1988) porcelain figurines are displayed in the dome of the Thiel Gallery. The installation will be in dialogue with Karl-Axel Pehrson's ceiling painting from 1978, as the painting's imaginary plants and animals encloses the figurines in a dreamlike landscape.
Helga Henschen. Anniversary Exhibition
Helga Henschen (1917-2002) was a multi-disciplinary artist who chose freely among styles and expressions, blending seriousness, humour and politics into her images. Mighty sun goddesses, protective bulls, and children with birds hobnob with outspoken ladies and handwritten messages of solidarity, community and humanity. Helga Henschen allowed art to infuse her entire life, and in hindsight she appears to have been one of the most productive, popular and famous Swedish artists in the post-war era.
More Edvard Munch at Thielska. Graphic prints from the Embassy of Norway in Stockholm
This highly concentrated exhibition consists of eight graphic prints borrowed from the embassy of Norway in Stockholm. The Thiel Gallery has one of the largest collections of art by Edvard Munch outside Norway. The current presentation with loans from the embassy can in part be seen as a complement to works in the museum collection.
Fashionable Memories. Clothes from Tonie Lewenhaupt´s collection
European fashion history, the social context of clothing, Tonie Lewenhaupt´s act as a collector as well as the poetic potentials of fashion are themes addressed in the exhibition, where the clothes will be displayed along with her historical illustrations of fashion. In The Thiel Gallery, once a private home, the clothes will be placed in a unique setting. The costumes will also animate the rooms as places to meet, to be seen and show off.
Moments. Sculptures by Karin Wiberg
Karin Wiberg’s characterful sculptures of human beings and animals are self-possessed, expressing peace and thoughtfulness. In the summer her works claim their space in different parts of The Thiel Gallery’s garden – some sculptures are clearly visible, others more hidden. Together, they lead a walk that lets the visitor discover unexpected spots. The exhibition becomes an opportunity to slow down and enjoy the stillness under the grand old oak or the view of the fruit trees and the sunlit grass-slopes.
Artistic blossoming. Art Nouveau at Rörstrand in 1895–1920
Sinuous shapes inspired by nature characterizes the arts and crafts of Art Nouveau or Art Nouveau style, in 1900. The pottery is full of birds hovering in the air, crawling crustaceans, fish and algae from the underwater world. Trees and vegetation from the forest and land meet with insects, weeds and flowerbeds. The design is inspired by the Swedish countryside, Japanese imagery and European decorative arts.
David Edström. A rediscovered sculptor
Warm welcome to an exhibition with the since long neglected Swedish-American sculptor David Edström (1873–1938). The exhibition takes place in the Söderberg room and is composed of eleven sculptors by the artist. The patron Ernest Thiel was a a great admirer of Edström and the museum has the largest collection of the sculptor. All the pieces in this exhibition belong, with one exception, to the museum.
In the museum you will also find professor Rolf Lundén´s newly published biography of the artist Man Triumphant. The Divided Life of David Edstrom.
Maria Adlercreutz. With the world in the fabric
The exhibition is the first retrospective of the artist Maria Adlercreutz (1936–2014), an innovator of Swedish textile art during post-war times. With great dedication she captured the Zeitgeist of the early 1970s. Woven textiles about global solidarity and close studies of nature are presented along with images reflecting the history of working women.
Carl Kylberg – With colour beyond the surface
Flowing brushwork and vibrant colours distinguish the Swedish artist Carl Kylberg’s (1878-1952) paintings of landscapes, figures and still lifes. He combined his artistic practice with a spiritual quest that imbues his oeuvre with an existential dimension. The dissolved shapes in his works were debated in both art and politics.
The Garden Party – Contemporary Swedish Sculpture
"Without the arts, the man is reduced to a barbarian." (Ernest Thiel).
Artists: Ebba Bohlin, Cecilia Edefalk, Charlotte Gyllenhammar, Rami Khoury, Albin Looström, Joakim Ojanen, Bella Rune and Elisabeth Westerlund.
Lethal beautifully – Art Jewellery by Märta Mattsson
Swedish jewellery artist Märta Mattsson (b. 1982) sees beauty in what others might find strange or even unpleasant. She has transformed the pull towards what can at first be seen as appalling into an artistic motivation - to not want to look, while not being able to look away. The jewellery are part of their own world, where sparkling rocks, metals and materials from nature meet beetles, insects, and taxidermied animals. Odd and dead objects gets brought into new life through her work.
Olof Sager-Nelson and his contemporaries – Anywhere out of the world
The years around 1900 were a revolutionary time, with rapid industrialisation, modernisation and scientific progress. At the same time, many people sought to look towards the darker sides of life and the mystery of human existence.
Olof Sager-Nelson (1868-1896) was an artist who lived in the midst of this turbulence and became known for his soulful portraits. He was born in the Swedish province Värmland and studied art in city of Gothenburg. Sager-Nelson was drawn to the art scene in Europe, where he painted his most important works. Never returning to Sweden, he died at the mere age of 27, in the oasis of Biskra, Algeria, where he was trying to cure his tuberculosis.
Eternal Bloom! Bead Art and Crafted Nature
The Thiel Gallery is blossoming! Nature is on the museum’s doorstep with the woody glades, flowering meadows and seasonal changes of Djurgården. Now we are opening the doors to floral delight of another kind, with handmade flowers made of glass beads and wire.
Men at water. Jan Hietala and Eugène Jansson in dialogue
Men bathing is a subject that has attracted attention throughout art history. Bodies moving or at rest, and nude bathing with its oscillation between social and private situations, provide new opportunities to observe the naked male body. Bathing houses and spontaneous outdoor bathing have inspired artists at least since the late 19th century to portray both the hygienic benefits, the liberated playfulness and the erotic allure of water. Read more
Veronica Nygren
Veronica Nygren (1940–2006) had the ability to weave an entire world into her art. She filled it with everyday experiences and political awareness, with knowledge about Swedish crafts traditions and global influences, in a vibrant dialogue with art history and contemporary art. Nygren indefatigably put the potential of textiles to the test. Today, she stands out as a regenerator of textile art and design in post-war Sweden.
Ernest Thiel’s feeling for nature: hunting, art and business
Nature is in focus at the Thiel Gallery during fall and winter! The landscape paintings that Ernest Thiel added to the collection in the Gallery, by for example Bruno Liljefors and Gustaf Fjæstad, are shown together with photographs and moving images of Thiel himself in the forest or countryside. Three contemporary artists, Corinne Ericson, AKAY and Ernst Billgren, have contributed works in the exhibition rooms and out in the park, to demonstrate that the double standards from the previous turn of the century still exist, albeit in a different way.
Portraits at Thielska – Family and Friends
In this exhibition the Thiel Gallery explores its own identity, with a focus on the banker and art patron Ernest Thiel who founded the Gallery. He acquired several portraits of his nearest and dearest and of himself. The images reveal his interest in art and give insights into the family history and the social activities that went on in the house. The exhibition features paintings, photographs, prints and busts from the decades around 1900. An installation with costumes borrowed from the Royal Dramatic Theatre’s costume studio gives the visitor a glimpse of the social life at the turn of the Century.
RUSSIA 1900-1913
This exhibition is part of 'Russia: The 20th Century In Photographs', a unique multimedia project by the Moscow House of Photography to establish a photo-archive of Russian history. Its aim is to follow the actual course of historical progress through the 20th century and recreate an authentic image of the events and personalia of a past epoch.
Stockholm New — national romanticism from double turn of the centuries: contemporary fashion photography meets classic masterpiece painting
The international, English language, multiple award-winning fashion and style magazine Stockholm New was published in a total of twelve issues over the years 1993-2002. It’s a well-documented claim that the magazine was trendsetting, even groundbreaking, not only in Sweden but globally. It’s also generally acknowledged that Stockholm New played a key role in the creation of a new contemporary “Sweden image” — that of a modern, cutting edge scene for fashion, trends, design, and a wide range of creative expressions.
The permanent collection
In 1896, Ernest Thiel bought his first large painting, Morning Mood by the Sea by Bruno Liljefors. He continued to add to his collection, and soon the apartment on Strandvägen was too small. “I want a home decorated with paintings on all the walls, I want it to be comfortable, I want to live there” Thiel wrote to the architect Ferdinand Boberg, whom he chose to design his new home.
Munch! — Nietzsche, Thiel and Scandinavia’s greatest artist
In honour of the 150th birthday of Norway’s great artist Edvard Munch, we present our greatest endeavour in the history of Thielska Galleriet in Stockholm: the exhibition Munch! — Nietzsche, Thiel and Scandinavia’s greatest artist, featuring works from the period 1880-1910, a total of more than twenty oil paintings and a large part of the artist’s prints.
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Araki/Zorn
Nobuyoshi Araki is one of the world's most renowned photographers. He has been called the Mapplethorpe of Japan. His images, which are often on the boundary between documentary and staged photography, frequently portray nude women and social taboos. The female body has been a popular subject in art for thousands of years. Women as objects of the male gaze is a topic to constantly highlight, discuss and challenge. Araki’s photos of women are ambiguous, taking impressions from a millennium-old Japanese tradition, and ancient culture with male and female roles. The women are often looking straight at the viewer, with a strong erotic undercurrent. Other images have a stricter, not to say, restrained eroticism, enhanced by dress codes and various attributes. Bondage is a phenomenon that incorporates both aesthetics and sexuality with roots going back centuries in Japanese tradition. Araki’s photographs also portray Tokyo, everyday settings and the people and customs of times gone by. But also the new Tokyo with its extremely urban lifestyle.
Meta Isæus-Berlin - Suppressing
Meta Isæus-Berlin’s installations have an aesthetic terseness, where the setting of the narrative is based on the notion of the home. In her works, she uses stage structures as a visual framework. Familiar environments take on a dreamy atmosphere, where objects and materials are significant and tell their own story. Time and memory, dream and reality, are intertwined.
Sophie Tottie – The Complaints of a Line
The ability to read abstract presentations relates to a reality that does not aspire to present a figurative picture but nevertheless describes an existing actuality. Since the 18th century, geological drawings, for instance, have radically changed our perception of the line, the marking, and what they express. Despite a predetermined concept and a strict implementation of the idea, Tottie's drawings generate images where idea, method, material and size together form an expression – an expression that is just as abstract as the sediments of earth but which are constantly shifted by the process beyond the reaches of the predictable.
Cecilia Ömalm Krajcikova – Nocturne I/ Denderah
An examination of historic and architectonic fragments. The floor plan of an old Egyptian temple from thousands of years ago, with hidden sepulchres, holy rooms with ritual meanings. On a surface measuring nearly 500 sq m, an intense blue-green light cuts through the hilly terrain, ruthlessly drawing its history with no concern for the contemporary world. As darkness falls, the work is activated and the outlines of rooms and chambers appear and open up for visitors to enter a fictional light-drawing.
Peter Frie – Hågkomst | Reminiscence
Swedish artist Peter Frie works in one of the oldest art traditions of oil on canvas. He repeats his motifs over and over again and with very little variation in countless series. Vast, timeless landscapes, quiet paintings that carries a melancholic undertone.
