The Hamburg Kunsthalle is currently showcasing Swedish painter Anders Zorn as a former superstar whose portraits continue to captivate audiences today. The exhibition presents the largest-ever display of Zorn's work, featuring over 150 paintings, watercolors, etchings, and several sculptures, curated by Markus Bertsch, Jana Kunst, and Michelle Adler.
Zorn's artistic brilliance is exemplified in a scene depicting a country fair in rural Sweden. In the background, visitors on foot and in horse-drawn carriages climb a hill toward the town seeking entertainment. However, for one visitor, the fun has already ended: in the lower right corner of the painting, positioned close to the edge, the back and head of a man lying on the ground are visible. His wife sits before him in the lush green grass, dressed in a red-striped holiday dress, staring resignedly into emptiness as she waits for her drunken husband to sleep off his stupor, holding his hat in her hand.
This painting encapsulates much of what defines the work of Anders Zorn, born in 1860 in the Swedish town of Mora and died there in 1920. His masterful technique combines impressionist brushstrokes, luminous colors, surprising compositional cuts, and deep perspectives that convey dynamism with a naturalistic view of reality. The scene, taken from Zorn's hometown of Mora in central Sweden, represents an important part of his body of work: the lives of farmers, craftsmen, workers, and the Nordic landscapes in which they are embedded form a large part of his motif repertoire.
However, his work was by no means limited to rural Swedish life. A counterpoint to these scenes was formed by portraits of the beautiful, rich, and powerful from Europe and North America's high society – numerous magnates and society ladies, the Swedish royal couple, and two U.S. presidents. The flashy superstar label attached to him at the Kunsthalle might initially seem more reminiscent of Andy Warhol than a 19th-century painter prince like Zorn. But on second glance, it fits quite well: like Warhol, Zorn had a pronounced talent for marketing his work and staging himself.
Born as the illegitimate child of a German brewery master and a Swedish seasonal worker from humble circumstances, Zorn made career-advancing contacts at the right time during his studies at the Stockholm Art Academy. He sold paintings at high prices early on, maintained a press presence, loved glamour (at least temporarily), and understood how to become rich through his art without compromising on quality. His paintings were exhibited and awarded prizes at major European exhibitions, and Zorn himself was extremely mobile.
Together with his wife Emma Lamm, who served as his manager and played a major role in his commercial and social success, he lived for several years first in London and then in Paris. Numerous extensive travels took him to the United States, North Africa, and Spain, which occupies a large space in his work with depictions of passionate-eyed women and Moorish-influenced architecture. The technical brilliance, radiance, and narrative vitality of the paintings make walking through the exhibition an aesthetic pleasure.
The watercolors with which Zorn began are in no way inferior in quality to the oil paintings he later transitioned to. He also convinces as a graphic artist, as shown by the large selection of etchings displayed in the exhibition. Portraits form an important part of his oeuvre: Zorn did not paint people in the studio but placed them in their everyday environments, capturing them in typical poses and characteristic activities. The banker sits at his desk in his tastefully furnished study, holding a cigar between his fingers; the society lady in an elegant, colorful evening dress has taken her place in the salon, her arm casually resting on the back of a silk-covered sofa; the actor performs on stage, the opera singer rehearses at the music stand.
Often, viewers have the impression that the subjects turn directly toward them from within the painting. However, Zorn portrayed himself in the studio – after all, that was his professional environment. His self-portrait in red from 1915 shows him not unlike his portrait of a banker, casually holding a cigar between his fingers. There is a special relationship between the Hamburg Kunsthalle and Zorn: in the winter of 1891/92, he stayed in the Hanseatic city at the invitation of director Alfred Lichtwark, where he painted several views of the harbor.
These works demonstrate a particular skill of Zorn's: here, as in his lake, sea, and river paintings, the design of water surfaces and the light dancing on them achieves an almost hypnotic effect. A particularly impressive example is provided by the Church Bay on Lidingö. The view through delicate branches with feather-like leaves and needles onto the bay draws the viewer down into a shimmering ripple of waves. In 1896, Anders and Emma Zorn settled permanently in his hometown of Mora, where they established Zorngården, a representative estate, founded an orphanage and a folk high school for the professional training of young people, and began planning an open-air museum to help preserve old craft techniques and village traditions.
The museum was only opened nineteen years after Zorn's death. When he died in 1920, a Swedish newspaper called him the artist most deeply rooted in Sweden. The cosmopolitan had become a Swedish national artist, and he remains so today, as evidenced by the Swedish ambassador's participation in the exhibition opening. In the rest of the world, however, Zorn's star faded after World War I. Given the current art movements of the time – Expressionism, Surrealism, New Objectivity – his work now seemed old-fashioned.
German museums, including the Hamburg Kunsthalle, sold his works. Now Zorn, who was already the subject of a smaller exhibition in Lübeck in 2012, is experiencing a well-deserved comeback on the big stage. The exhibition 'Anders Zorn: Sweden's Superstar' runs at the Kunsthalle Hamburg until January 25, 2026, with the catalog available at the museum for 39 euros.
