Lena Cronqvist and Roj Friberg meets August Strindberg

Lena Cronqvist and Roj Friberg meets August Strindberg

In the late 1980s, Lena Cronqvist and Roj Friberg, two Swedish artists with strong, characteristic imagery, were approached by Parisian gallerist Edouard Weiss. He asked them to interpret a Strindberg play of their choice in a series of lithographs that he would publish.

Friberg's recurring motif of crumbling façades was well suited to 'The Ghost Sonata' (Spöksonaten), a play about a stale, closed-in upper middle class from the turn of the century. Nightmarish secrets await behind the wardrobe door in Friberg's pictures.

Lena Cronqvist took on 'A Dream Play' (Ett drömspel) and created a daughter of Indra with arms and wings as if she were an Indian goddess and angel in one. Strindberg's glassmaker, one of the tormented people that Indra's daughter meets during her earthly journey, walks side by side with his little daughter, one of Cronqvist's recurring female characters. This particular girl has an unusually kind and open face.