Lena Cronqvist

At the beginning of the 1980s, girls appear as motifs in Lena Cronqvist's pictorial world, but it is mainly in the years 1990-1994 that little girls dominate the motifs. Usually it is not nice little girls that she depicts. At first glance, they may indeed resemble ideal images of children. However, they soon prove to be quite terrifying as they handle the various objects that have been slipping in and out of Cronqvist's paintings since the early 1970s. Like an echo from the past, memories, dreams and forbidden thoughts play out on her large canvases.
Cronqvist constantly returns to her childhood and the not entirely uncomplicated relationship with her parents and siblings. Her paintings of little girls are far from Carl Larsson's family idyll. They exude alienation, conflicted emotions and sometimes a recklessness that we don't usually associate with childhood. The canvases are filled with children: girls bathing, girls playing with dolls, girls trying to drown each other. They do all this without moving a muscle. Around 1993, Lena Cronqvist produced a number of unforgettable paintings of girls in water. The auction's painting 'Girl with Swan' creates an uncertainty about the child's mood: should the swan be strangled or given a kiss? Later, her girls also acquired a physical body when she started sculpting, the children were moulded in clay and bronze.
With curious eyes, Cronqvist's children explore the world without any adults present. Through innocent play, the child is moulded into the adult world, trained to handle social situations and relationships. It is in the borderlands of the psyche that Cronqvist moves with such skill. In her art, she has never avoided the taboo, but instead eagerly explores topics such as grief, anger, death and abandonment. Through her personal art, she gives us universal images in which we can all mirror ourselves.