Exhibitions 2012

6 October - 10 February 2013

In the Italian wine region of Valpolicella, wine is made in the same way as in Antiquity. Valpolicella, which means "the valley of the many cellars", does not only produce Valpolicella wines but also Amarone. The small region north of Verona and east of Lake Garda borders the foothills of the Alps/Dolomites to the north and the mighty plain of Po to the south.

The exhibition Amore Amarone shows how Amarone wine is produced; from the drying process to the finished bottle. The exhibition includes sketches, maps and bamboo shelves with grapes hung up to dry, straight from the harvest in Valpolicella. There will also be scent samples for visitors to savour. In addition, the exhibition includes works from the collections, such as the god of wine, Bacchus, ancient wine amphoras and drinking vessels from Carl Milles' Collection of Antiquities.

Virgil and the other Roman poets were Carl Milles' introduction to ancient mythology. That Carl Milles was a great lover of Italy is a well-known fact and Millesgården's terraces bear testimony to how greatly inspired he was by the country. The Collection of Antiquities, with Roman and Greek sculptures, was his library and source of inspiration.

Vines and grapes appear on many of the sculptures in the Artists' Home at Millesgården. Perhaps Carl Milles was particularly enamoured with grapes, seeing that many of his works are decorated with vines?

In the Valpolicella wine region, grapes are dried in order to extract sugar, acid, flavour and concentration, in the same manner as 2,000 years ago. The grape varieties also boast a tradition many thousand years old, corvina, rondinella and molinara. However, since a few years ago , other grape varieties are also permitted - for better and for worse. One such excellent grape is the ancient oseleta which was rediscovered by, among others, Sandro Boscaini at Masi, twenty-five years ago.

The Artists' Home with its neo-classical interiors in Pompeian red with pilasters and floor mosaics provide a fitting framework for the Amarone wines whose grapes have journeyed from Antiquity through the Middle Ages into our time.

22 September 2012 - 13 January 2013

The Swedish artists Astri Bergman Taube and Evert Taube lived their lives in the public eye. In the exhibition Astri and Evert Taube: On their Love of Art, we present their artistic breadth and achievements. Both were hard-working professionals; Astri made sculptures in her studio while taking care of the children and the home, Evert composed folk songs and wrote books, painted and was a very popular artist.

The exhibition will present artworks, photographs, films and texts from the different worlds in which the artists moved and garnered their inspiration. Astri Bergman Taube made many portrait sculptures, often of children. In her drawings and paintings, we see scenes from Stockholm and Roslagen, as well as from journeys to Europe and the USA.

While travelling, Evert Taube often collected material for his books and folk songs, painted and drew. Paintings from Italy, France and South America were mixed with depictions of landscape of the Swedish East and West coasts.

In interviews Evert Taube often emphasised that his career as a songwriter and stage artist was merely a means of supporting himself and his family. Painting and writing books was what he was really interested in. Despite this, his artistry turned him into a national treasure in the Swedish cultural world and many artists today cite Evert Taube as an inspirer. Astri Bergman Taube was also active in public life with exhibitions and the many public commissions she executed.

Art student Astri Bergman's encounter with the artist, songwriter and author Evert Taube in 1920 led to marriage, a family and a long life together which was always centred on their love of artistic creativity and the arts. 

28 January - 20 May 2012

Millesgården presents an exhibition of Ingrid Vang Nyman, artist and children's book illustrator. She is best known for her illustrations for Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books. Despite the fact that her powerful images are widely recognised, Ingrid Vang Nyman has remained relatively unknown, in comparison to Ilon Wikland or Björn Berg, who also illustrated Astrid Lindgren's books.

Although born in Denmark, it was Ingrid Vang Nyman who introduced modernism in children's book illustration in Sweden. She formed a bridge between the Swedish and Danish children's book illustration traditions and out Denmark out into the world and modernism. During the Word War II, Sweden was cut off from the world around and it was not until after the end of the war that the borders were opened and new influences washed over the country. In art visual this was evident with the artist group the Men of 1947 and the emergence of concrete art.

In children's book illustration, Ingrid Vang Nyman had already broken new ground with her bold, modern "flat pictures" for the book Pippi Longstocking, which was published as early as 1945. Perhaps the "flatness" of her images had something to do with the fact that she had vision in only one eye; she injured the other one in an accident as a child. However, the main reason was of course Ingrid Vang Nyman's creative way of using colour and form in combination with the printing technology.

Ingrid Vang Nyman's images were stylised and tight, but she took great care to correctly depict the real world with its animals and various environments. In the 1950's she conducted meticulous research at the ethnographic collections of the National Museum in Copenhagen for her depictions of children of distant cultures, and she studied animals at the Copenhagen Zoo.

This is an exhibition designed to delight both children and adults. The presentation includes original illustrations, as well as a scenography in which children and adults can play. The exhibition focuses on the books about Pippi Longstocking,Jugga Jagga and Vagge Vugge, The Children of Noisy Village and the posthumously published Människorsnas land, (Land of man) a book about Greenland with illustrations by Ingrid Vang Nyman.

Some of Ingrid Vang Nyman's comic strips featuring Pippi Longstocking, first published in a children's magazine 1957-1959, will also be shown.

The first exhibition ever with Ingrid Vang Nyman was showed at Vejen Art museum, Denmark 2000/2001 in collaboration with her son, the political cartoonist Peder Nyman.

The first major exhibition in Sweden of Ingrid Vang Nyman was presented at the National Library of Sweden in 2003.

The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Saltkråkan AB and the National Library of Sweden with loans from private lenders and publishers.

The exhibition group comprises: Lena Törnqvist, selection of original artworks and texts; Lina Sporrong, scenography, and Ulrika Sasko, graphic design.

More about Ingrid Vang Nyman (1916-1959)

Ingrid Vang Nyman was born in Denmark in 1916 and received artistic training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 1937 she met Arne Nyman, whom she married in 1940. The same year their son Peder was born.

In 1942 Ingrid Vang Nyman moved to Sweden. Initially she supported herself by odd jobs, e.g.washing dishes. She also learnt to fold lampshades from her friend Le Klint who later founded a word wide company in this field. In 1944 Ingrid Vang Nyman divorced Arne Nyman.

In 1945, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren was published, with illustrations by Ingrid Vang Nyman. It was followed by Pippi Goes on Board (1946) and Pippi in the South Seas (1948). The picture book Do you know Pippi Longstocking was published in 1947.In 1945 she also illustrated Ivik den faderlöse [Ivik the Fatherless], written by her cousin, Pipaluk Freuchen, daughter of the internationally known polar explorer Peter Freuchen.

In the period 1945 - 1953 Ingrid Vang Nyman illustrated more than thirty childrens's books and a very large number of illustrations for other publications. After her return to Denmark only the comic strip version of Pippi Longstocking was printed in her lifetime.

In 1954 she returned to Copenhagen.

From 1957-59 she received psychological counselling in Copenhagen.
On Saint Lucy's Day (13 December) 1959, Ingrid Vang Nyman ended her life in the Gotha boarding house in Copenhagen.

2 June - 9 September 2012

Millesgården presents some 50 paintings by the modernist Dick Beer (1893-1938) who was active as a painter primarily in France but has remained relatively unknown in Sweden. As a young man in Paris in the 1910s, Beer experimented with different styles and his particular brand of impressionist painting and interpretation of cubism are of distinguishing quality. At times he has been regarded as a cubist in the spirit of Paul Cézanne.

Dick Beer was born in England and after being orphaned came to Sweden in 1907, first living with relatives until he got his own accommodation in Västergötland. At an early age he was impressed by the melting pot of Paris and in 1912 he exchanged the Royal Academy for the French capital and rented a studio in the vicinity of Montparnasse. He participated in the popular lectures at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére and at the Académie Colarossi.

In 1913, aged 20, Dick Beer held his debut exhibition in Stockholm which proved to be a great success. The year after, 1914, he painted his impressions on study tours, first to Venice, Florence and Sicily and later to Tunisia, Morocco and Spain. His painting was fresh, luminous and impressionist.

When the First World War broke out, Dick Beer, like so many other artists, enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He said he came from Switzerland and gave his name as Herman Beer, as the French army would never have accepted his English background.

The war was in many ways a decisive factor for Dick Beer?s life and art. In 1915 he was severely injured in a grenade attack that resulted in profound deafness and a nervous condition that would plague him for the rest of his life. Soon after the attack he was admitted to hospital for a convalescent period at Château de Rochefort where the artist Fernand Léger was also a patient. During this time Beer continued to paint his impressionist canvasses.After the war, around 1918, Dick Beer?s artistic development took a new direction. He painted picture after picture in his own cubistic style without rules or laws. It was an emotive cubism, sometimes combined with naïve playfulness and futuristic characteristics.Many of his paintings were conceived during his travels.

Landscapes, of with the focus on houses, were transformed into cubistically composed edifices. Another recurring motive was the horse, which was of special significance as his father, John Beer, illustrated them for a living. In England John Beer was best known for his watercolours depicting hunting and racing scenes. But above all he portrayed successful gallopers for the English upper classes. As a protégé of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) John Beer was ensured an introduction to the right clientele. He was an intellectual man who moved in London?s cultural circles, visiting the homes of, among others, Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler.

After the end of the First World War, Dick Beer was severely criticised for his "pseudo cubist" pictorial language. His expressionist and impressionist paintings were better received.

Dick Beer suffered his entire life from the injuries he sustained in the war and he become addicted to the morphine prescribed to alleviate the pain. Through the years he alternated exhibiting in both French and Swedish salons and galleries. In 1934 he acquired a permanent studio on Bergsgatan in Stockholm, but continued to travel regularly to Southern Europe.

In 1938 Dick Beer died from complications arising from a severe case of bronchitis that resulted in abscesses in his lungs.


He is represented at, among others: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Norrköping Art Museum, Östergötland Museum; Gothenburg Museum of Art; Borås Museum of Art, Malmö Museum and the Swedish State's Collection of Portraits, Gripsholm.