Mamma Andersson, 'All They Had To Do Was Dream'
Mamma Andersson has been called a 'tradition bearer'. She is firmly rooted in a Swedish painting tradition represented by, for example, Hans Wigert, Lena Cronqvist and Dick Bengtsson. Her color treatment has many similarities with the latter's well-worked and patinated surfaces. However, Andersson has succeeded in creating a completely unique painterly language where she uses different techniques and types of paint to build up her images in different layers. The base can be acrylic paint, which dries quickly and is easy to apply to large canvases. The next layer can be oil paint applied with a brush and oilbars, a crayon of compressed oil paint and wax. Andersson is interested in the interplay between material and technique. Large opaque light surfaces in pastel colors are juxtaposed with details in velvety black.
Basically, Mamma Andersson sees herself as a landscape painter. She has painted mountains, trees, plains - often Nordic and especially northern nature. Motifs from Hälsingland in particular have inspired her and the desolate landscape symbolizes Andersson's home and origin.
› Signed Mamma Andersson and dated 2001 verso. Oil on panel 122 x 122 cm.
“There is almost cinematic suspense to many of her paintings. A scenic sense of a place where something is going to happen or has just happened.”
– Marie Laurberg, Curator ’Mamma Andersson’, Louisiana, Denmark, 2014
'All They Had To Do Was Dream' by Mamma Andersson is one of the many highlights being sold at Bukowskis Contemporary Art & Design this spring.
Contemporary Art & Design
Viewing: April 19 – 23, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Open: weekdays 11 am – 6 pm, weekends 11 am – 4 pm
Auction live: April 24 – 25, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm