[1][2][3][4] His style was fluid with changing trends and contained elements of Cubism, futurism, Expressionism,[5] Surrealism, avant-garde, progressivism,[2][6][4][7] romanticism,[citation needed] and abstract.

[4][8] His works primarily featured very masculine men, particularly sailors, labourers, and athletes, and elements of industry, such as factories, machines, and cars.

[6][7] His early artwork centered on Art Nouveau and often featured images of Oscar Wilde, whose openly homosexual lifestyle Adrian-Nilsson admired.

[2][6] Around this time, he met Bengt Lidforss, a biologist from Lund University who was openly gay, and they left Sweden for Copenhagen in 1910.

[7][6][3] Der Sturm was a major part of Berlin's progressive community, and through it Adrian-Nilsson encountered Futurism, Cubism,[4][7] and abstract art.

[4] In summer 1914, Adrian-Nilsson was an artistic manager for Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne.

[7][2] However, after learning his partner Karl Holmström had died suddenly of pneumonia in Lund, Adrian-Nilsson returned to his hometown.

[7] Adrian-Nilsson moved back to Stockholm in 1916 and continued producing artwork featuring athletes, soldiers, sailors, and labourers, along with symbols of industrialism such as factories.

[6][2] In addition to oil paintings, Adrian-Nilsson produced watercolour works and wrote poems, short stories, and children's books.

[3] From 1940, Adrian-Nilsson "liv[ed] in bitter voluntary isolation", spurred by his anger about not garnering the amount of success and recognition he felt he deserved.

[6][2][5] Following the end of World War I, Andersson changed his name to Edvin Ganborg, a nod to Adrian-Nilsson's alias GAN, "to indicate his alliance with the artist."

For several decades, alongside his full-time job as a machinist, he worked as an art dealer in Norrköping selling Adrian-Nilsson's paintings.