[2] Some of his most famous paintings are Den döende dandyn, Crime Passionnel, Svarta Diana and John blund.
[4] In 1919, he proposed to Nita Wallenberg, but her father, a Swedish diplomat, disapproved of Dardel and the marriage was not to be.
After studying in Sweden he did as many of his contemporaries and traveled to Paris around 1910 (such as Leander Engström, Isaac Grünewald, Einar Jolin, and Sigrid Hjerten who all became students of Henri Matisse).
[9] In the early 1920s, Dardel created a number of works based upon stage sets, and these have been likened to sketches of drama or film.
Dardel also created the stage sets for Midsummer Wake (music by Hugo Alfvén), and Maison de Fous (a dance drama with compositions by Viking Dahl).
[9] Not exceptionally appreciated in his lifetime, his breakthrough in Sweden came simultaneously to the breaking out of World War II in Europe, at the time when Liljevalchs konsthall displayed a retrospective of Dardel's life and works.
His works Självporträtt (Self-portrait) and Visit hos en excentrisk dam (Visit at an eccentric lady) were featured by the Swedish Postal-works 1988 stamp series Svenska konstnärer i Paris (Swedish artists in Paris).
His works came to be analyzed under the budding field of gender-studies, and the ambivalence of the sex of his characters were topic of study.