Lena Cronqvist

Lena Cronqvist is one of Scandinavia’s most prominent Expressionists. Her autobiographically inspired oeuvre often deals with unpleasant aspects of human existence and everyday life. Cronqvist studied at Stockholm’s Konstfack (University of Arts, Crafts and Design) between 1958 and 1959, after which she spent the following six years (1959 – 1964) at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. Not only praised for her easel painting, Cronqvist has also found success as a sculptor (working primarily in bronze). She has illustrated the books of her late husband, celebrated author, Göran Tunström (1937 – 2000) and created a portfolio based on August Strindberg’s (1849 – 1912) Ett drömspel (A Dream Play, thirty lithographs, 1989). Widely exhibited (most recently with a retrospective, covering six decades, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, 16 March – 27 April 2024) Cronqvist is also represented with several works in the collections of Nationalmuseum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Since the mid-1960s, Lena Cronqvist’s art has repeatedly been hailed for its urgency and contemporaneity. Cronqvist began to attract attention at a time when many of her artistic peers found inspiration in international directions such as pop art and photorealism. From the very beginning, Cronqvist, however, distanced herself from the impersonal aesthetics that characterized these directions (whilst also having the courage to deviate from the Marxist collective and political painting of the early 1970s). At the time, Francis Bacon’s (1909 - 1992) expressive, candid work and Edvard Munch’s (1863 - 1944) symbolism seemed more interesting to her than the abstract works that then dominated the Swedish art scene.

In Cronqvist’s art there is a sense of alienation that ferments and bursts into rebellion. She portrays her inability to be subordinated to the conventional patterns. Cronqvist’s art examines the underlying conflicts that characterize human interaction, often posing questions about gender, sexuality and traditional family life in the process. In this respect her art, with often psychologically charged scenes, belongs to the painterly expressive tradition. In the 1970s, she also produced several, now legendary works, with clear references to the history of art, including self-portraits, the extraordinary The Engagement (1974/1975, oil on canvas, 169 x 125 cm, private collection), a double portrait based on Jan van Eyck’s (c. 1380/1390 – 1441) famous Arnolfini portrait (1434, oil on oak panel, 82 x 60 cm, National Gallery, London), depicting Cronqvist and her husband Göran Tunström, and Mother (1975, oil and tempera on canvas, 169 x 126 cm, Norrköpings Konstmuseum), with its reversal of the Madonna motif and the mother – daughter relationship. Cronqvist is often her own model in compositions that could be perceived as almost naked confessions. Ingela Lind writes (in Lena Cronqvist. Målningar 1964 – 1994):

In her work, she mixes concrete, mythical and socio-political feminism. A Sibylline trait that brings to mind American artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and Louise Bourgeois. They have all problematized notions of biological femininity and artistry. Their art is physical and seemingly autobiographical. It revolves around self-hatred, sexuality, attachment to the father, rebellion of authority, the relationship between the girl and the adult woman, between inner and outer.

Cronqvist prefers explicitly existential themes. Life is set against death, the self against others, intimacy against lack of contact. The “actors” in the “drama” laid out on Cronqvist’s canvases are often made up by the woman and the man – or sometimes the child and its family members. A lot of this can be perceived as classical in its kind. Similar approaches can be found, as Folke Lalander has pointed out, in the art of Mannerism, Baroque and Symbolism. But there is a crucial difference: Cronqvist’s presence is always strongly felt in the pictures, she depicts her own life.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation