Ivan Aguéli is a Swedish painter and author born John Gustaf Agelii in Sala in 1869. He died in Barcelona in 1917. His life was quite adventurous. After studying in Gotland, he moved to Paris where he trained as a painter, then to London with interest for anarchists. Back to Sweden, he further studies painting under Anders Zorn. Soon he gets back to Paris and is arrested and trialed for his relations with the anarchist movement (Trial of the thirty). Subsequently, he lives in Egypt where he converts to Islam and adopt the name of Abd al-Hadi. He is oneof the first European admitted to study arabic and Islamic philosophy in the Al-Azhar university in Cairo. In 1911, he founds Al Akbariyya as a secret Sufi society in Paris. Suspected to be an Ottoman spy during World war I, he is expelled to Spain where he dies in 2017 in a train accident.

Landscapes, Gotland coast, 1892