By JENI PORTER Photographed by MAGNUS MÅRDING

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Casa Tomada (House Taken), an art installation by RAFAEL GÓMEZBARROS, comprises 300 half-metre-long fibreglass sculptures of ants placed on the façades of the Wanås Castle and its art gallery in southern Sweden. Details, last pages.

CUTTING-EDGE ART TRIUMPHS

IN ITS INCONGRUITY AT A MEDIEVAL

CASTLE ON A SWEDISH

ESTATE.

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igh on the gable wall of an old barn on Wanås Estate in southern Sweden are two intersecting clocks. They look like mirror images; the right one tells the time and the left one goes backwards. It’s an artwork by Esther Shalev-Gerz called Les Inséparables — a conjoined pair linking the past with the future. They’re a fitting symbol for Wanås (pronounced ‘Vanoos’), a 15th-century farming

and forestry property with a history of art collecting ranging from Rembrandts to Tracey Emin.

“My family came here in 1756,” says Baltzar Wachtmeister, of the eighth Wachtmeister generation to run the 4,200-hectare estate. A  corporate lawyer in Stockholm before destiny called him home, Baltzar lives here with his wife, Kristina, and their four daughters — Alice, Ruth, Ingrid and Betty. They take up the ‘east wing’, one of a  pair of residences flanking the magnificent 15th-century Wanås Castle, where his parents reside.

Built around 1760, the Wachtmeister’s 400-square-metre house was last occupied by Baltzar’s great-grandmother and had been used as a repository for cast-offs from the castle. “We tried to use all the things we found here,” says Kristina, whose design ethos was to be “contemporary but talk to the house”. A construction architect, Kristina says she’s more excited by floor plans than soft furnishings. She liked the layout and flow of the ground-floor rooms with their

sightlines to the garden but moved the kitchen and dining room to a  parlour on the sunny southern side. Overcoming some family resistance, she replaced old wooden floors with parquetry made from oak planks double the normal width. “Everything is a bit upscale because the proportions of the house are quite big.”

Baltzar and Kristina’s far-from-safe contemporary art collection takes precedence. A large screen showing an animated video by hot Swedish duo Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg shares the living room with an armoire from the castle, one drawer of which is full of faded silk lampshades that look like they pre-date electricity. Two portraits of Baltzar’s great-grandparents grace an entrance foyer illuminated by Tracey Emin’s neon The Kiss Was Beautiful and Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Starbrick’ light. “We buy what we like and never think about where it will go,” says Kristina. It all works because of the restraint shown otherwise. She used the same Swedish brännlyckan stone for kitchen benches and bathrooms, for instance, picking up its green tones in terrazzo floors and wall colours. “I really like when you have the same colour and there’s a thread through the design.”

Outside, Kristina added a stone terrace reached through French doors off the dining room to better connect the house to its verdant surroundings. It offers her favourite perspective. “We can see the castle, pond and swimming pool — and hear people playing tennis,” she says. The sculpture park displays almost 70 works by acclaimed international artists such as Robert Wilson, Jenny Holzer and Yoko Ono. »

this page: in the entrance foyer, The Kiss Was Beautiful neon light by TRACEY EMIN; ‘Starbrick’ light by OLAFUR ELIASSON; oil painting of Baltzar’s great-grandmother; floor bricks circa 1760; More Visible Markers in Twelve Exciting Colors by ALLAN MCCOLLUM; ROXY PAINE’s Scumak sculpture; papier maché self-portrait school project by daughter Ruth. opposite page, from top left: Kristina and her girls (from left to right), Alice, Ingrid, Betty and Ruth,

with Puma, the labrador retriever. Detail, Wish Trees for Wanås by YOKO ONO, to which visitors are invited to add. Baltzar Wachtmeister.

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« The park is a project led 30 years ago by Baltzar’s mother, Marika, which evolved into the Wanås Foundation. Bored with country life, Marika invited artists to stay and make works for the estate. (The estate’s history of collecting art goes back to 1850, when young bride Elisabeth von Platen brought 80 Dutch Master paintings, including a few Rembrandts and Lievens; the best were progressively dispersed to younger siblings.)

“In the beginning it was very much a garage project,” says Baltzar. “Me and my brothers were the assistants and guys from the farm like a blacksmith would help.” The artists relished the locale while the Wachtmeisters had an international life in rural Östra Göinge. “It was very exciting and it worked out — the place got vivid.”

Art and agriculture overlapped so much it influenced how they ran the estate — artists’ tactile practices inspiring them to turn their huge dairy farm organic in 1999. He and Kristina host dinners for visiting artists and participate in many Wanås Foundation activities. ››

In the dining room, Guldenakke #5 by Danish artist TRINE SØNDERGAARD; 1800s clock originally from Trollenäs Castle, where Baltzar’s great grandmother grew up; gold-painted curtain rods originally

in the castle; ASTRID linen curtains; Väktare (‘Guardian’) by Swedish painter KARIN BROOS; ‘Superellips’ dining table by BRUNO MATHSSON; Thonet ‘209’ and ‘215R’ chairs; ‘Tube Chandelier’ by MICHAEL

ANASTASSIADES, from The Apartment, Copenhagen; artworks on table — I Am You by IGSHAAN ADAMS; Fideicommissum by ANN-SOFI SIDÉN; Double Dribble by ANNE THULIN;

T42 by MONA HATOUM — are small-sized versions of some of the works in the sculpture park.

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this page, from top: in the living room, Ruth and Alice; Fog Father photograph by ANDERS KRISÁR; Crocodile Tears by CAJSA VON ZEIPEL; KAREN CAMPBELL painting; Källemo ‘Grandchild’ chairs by JOHN KANDELL; chair (left) found in the castle’s attic and recovered; Georg Jensen ‘Mama’ vase by ILSE CRAWFORD; Skultuna Via Fondazza ‘Model B’ and ‘Model C’ vases by PAOLO DELL’ELCE; ‘Lucia’ candleholders by THOMAS SANDELL, from Asplund; Dinesen oak parquetry floors. Ann Hamilton’s Lignum installation takes over five floors of an 18th-century barn on the estate.

clockwise: A House for Edwin Denby by ROBERT WILSON at the Wanås Foundation sculpture park. Baltzar and Alice near the eastern wall of the castle,

inscribed LSFVP for Lena Sofia von Putbus, who made major additions to the castle in 1708. Aerial shot of the 500m-long Eleven Minute Line by MAYA LIN

made from mounds of earth, in a cow paddock near the sculpture park.

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‹‹ “We thought we would miss the city life more but we love it here, it’s a nice mix,” he says. It has inspired them to open an 11-room hotel and restaurant next year. “We hope that visitors will meet other visitors and artists the way we have appreciated hanging out,” says Baltzar.

Kristina is running the project, converting two former cow and horse stables circa 1770 with massive 1.2-metre-deep walls and ancient arched iron windows into a quietly luxurious haven. She’s using oak from their forest for floorboards; there’ll be flowers from their garden, eggs from their hens and organic produce from their farm. All this and a powerful sense of place and history enlivened by thought-provoking art immersed in nature. Says Kristina, “It’s all about letting people live the life we have here.” VLVisit wanas.se.

this page, clockwise from above: Wish Trees for Wanås by YOKO ONO (14 apple trees, notes with wishes). The Wachtmeister family is

passionate about art and tennis. In the kitchen, Ateljé Lyktan ‘Bumling’ light by ANDERS PEHRSON; solid oak cabinetry

designed by Kristina Wachtmeister, made by Åraslöv; brännlyckan benchtop; terrazzo floor by Kristina; artwork from the Slicksten series

by ÅSA LINDSJÖ in collaboration with Ifö Sanitär. Tennis at dusk. Baltzar near the castle wall inscribed ‘A1708’ (in honour of Lena Sofia

von Putbus’s major additions to the castle in 1708). opposite page: The girls frolic in the garden. Details, last pages.

“We thought we would miss the city life more but we love it here, it’s a nice mix” — Baltzar Wachtmeister

PHOTOGRAPHED EXCLUSIVELY FOR VOGUE LIVING IN SOUTHERN SWEDEN.