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Lot Essay
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, known by his initials GAN, had acquainted himself with the latest tendencies of the European avant-garde through Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm during his visits to Germany between 1912 and 1914. Inspired by what he saw in Berlin, the artist adopted a Cubist-Futurist style of painting that focused on the modern metropolis and sought to unite Futurism's machine worship with Kandinsky's esoteric thought. GAN's dynamic, geometrically determined reflections on contemporary urban existence secured his reputation as the first artist to introduce abstract art to Sweden. In 1920, GAN moved to Paris where he began experimenting with painted wooden reliefs and sculpture. In Paris, GAN established friendships with Albert Gleizes, Alexander Archipenko and crucially, Fernand Léger, who fueled his fascination with modern technology. GAN was living with Léger in his Montparnasse studio at the time of Harlekin-Robot's production in 1922 and robotic human form of the sculpture clearly reveals the influence the French painter. This hybrid between abstracted human contours and mechanical apparatus is a celebration of the industrial age, a mute and obedient android wired for action. Alongside his interest in technological advancement, it is also highly probable that GAN took an interest in primitive art-forms at this time. Whilst GAN was working on Harlekin-Robot, Léger was engaged in designing costumes and sets for the 1923 La création du monde, a ballet based on African creation myths, and the sculpture appears to share an affinity with the stylized visages of African masks. A photograph taken in the artist's studio by André Kertész reveals a more recognisably human study for the present sculpture, whose pronounced planar features further emphasize the impact of tribal art on GAN's work. The rhythmically composed Harlekin-Robot refines and abstracts these modern and ancient influences, creating a totemic, pseudo-mechanical being that enforces the artist's reverential belief in the machine as a positive and constructive force in human society.