Torsten Andersson »Key Works 1946 – 2006«

The mythology that surrounds his career and person, is well documented. In 1966 he left his professorship at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm after a dramatic schism and moved to his childhood home in Benarp and took a break from painting until 1972.

Andersson was his own harshest critic. He is known for destroying most of his own creations and only allowing the strongest to survive. A story often retold is when a small group of well-known European museum people visited him in Benarp, in the middle of Skåne, southern Sweden. After traveling through dark forests and dramatic hills, they finally arrived and were met by a large pile of ash in the yard, from which smoke still rose. Andersson had burned all his paintings!

Notoriously his frustration at the experience of being misunderstood led Andersson to undermine his own successes. In 2008, when he was awarded 1 million SEK as 1st Prize in the Carnegie Art Award, Andersson commented with harsh frankness: “I've worked hard my whole damned life, sacrificing myself and so much else for the art. This prize is no confirmation that I have succeeded, but perhaps a hint of it.”

Nevertheless, he was championed by the key voices of his era in Sweden and attracted strong interest from international curators and galleries. His radical practice endures as a unique voice and his work continues to influence new generations of artists.

In 2026, Torsten Andersson would have turned 100 years old. In advance of his centennial anniversary Galerie Nordenhake presents a selection of rare works from key periods of his practice with provenance in the Torsten Andersson Foundation and closest family members.

The exhibition will be inaugurated with a conversation between Olle Granath, director of Moderna Museet during Andersson’s exhibition there in 1986, and a great champion of his work, and Paul Fägerskiöld, Andersson’s grandson and an internationally recognized painter in his own right.