Live at Moderna Museet: Jockum Nordström on Picasso

In the programme series Live at Moderna Museet, an artist is invited to talk about a work in the museum collection or a current exhibition. Often it is about their own work, but sometimes about another artist.

Jockum Nordström has been a central figure in Swedish art for forty years. He moves effortlessly between drawing, collage, sculpture and music. His visual world is playful and associative, often populated by figures that seem to be taken from dreams, childhood and popular culture. His work bears traces of art historical references, architecture and everyday life. Pablo Picasso and Jockum Nordström unite in a playful and uncompromising exploration of the possibilities of figuration, where the sensual and the intuitive are highlighted.

Late Picasso

The paintings from the last ten years of Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) life are intense, playful and uncompromising. In his old age he painted with furious energy – rapidly, directly and without embellishment. With a simplified, almost cartoonish imagery, he returned to previously explored themes such as the body, desire and death. He also approached motifs by older masters such as Rembrandt, Velázquez and Manet. It was no longer perfection he sought, but the living and the honest.

The exhibition “Late Picasso” opens on 22 November 2025 and runs until 5 April 2026.

Jockum Nordström

Jockum Nordström was born in 1963 in Stockholm, where he works today. He trained at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design and has been one of Sweden’s most noted artists since the 1990s. His works have been shown in solo exhibitions at, among others, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Camden Arts Centre in London and Liljevalchs in Stockholm. Nordström is represented in several prominent collections, including MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, SFMoMA in San Francisco and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.