Dansen (The Dance)

The Dance could rightfully be described as one of Lena Cronqvist’s most iconic paintings from the 1980s. Often exhibited, and mentioned in literature, the painting was previously part of the celebrated Sivert Oldenvi Collection (housed in Oldenvi’s private art gallery, adjacent to his villa outside of Stockholm).

The composition deals with the mystical power of dance, as an artistic form of expression. In the autumn of 1984, Lena Cronqvist saw two performances with the German choreographer Pina Bausch (1940 - 2009) and her troupe, Wuppertal Tanztheater, on tour in Stockholm. From her seat in the audience Cronqvist realized how “many of her own motifs” were being played out on the stage: scenes relating to the interaction between man and woman, and the human longing for affirmation. Cronqvist’s husband, famous author Göran Tunström (1937 – 2000), described the shared experience of the performance:

And on stage came about twenty people: women in elegant evening dresses on high-heeled shoes, men with strict, dark suits, and to the most banal schlager music they presented a theatre of life that never shied away from the existential questions about the essence of love, our identities, the difficulties and possibilities of cohabitation, about anxiety [...] Everywhere desperate attempts at encounters, closeness, absurd efforts to be seen.

After two decades as an artist, Lena Cronqvist had, by this time, examined most aspects of her own life, as it had been played out until then: returning to old memories, going back and forth between childhood and adulthood, and depicting her previous personal experiences as if in slow-motion. Cronqvist’s husband remembered it all a few years later, in 1987: “When Pina Bausch arrived in Stockholm, Lena Cronqvist was in the process of completing her thematically well-cohesive investigation of identity: through the images of illness and family, she had reached the mirror paintings: everything was concentrated on what the elusive mirror could reveal”. It was now that Pina Bausch’s art hit Cronqvist with full force. Cronqvist was pulled out of herself and shortly afterwards started working on some large canvases that would point out a completely new direction for the artist. Sune Nordgren (born 1948) writes (in Lena Cronqvist, 1990):

In “The Dance”, one of the dancers moves as if in a ritual dance in front of the others, lined up in tense anticipation. At the back of the head, a lingering afterimage emerges with the dancer in a different position, screaming, with its hand to its mouth like a megaphone. Or is it a stifled cry, a trapped feeling that makes itself visible in this demonic shadow image? Similar shadow figures have often appeared in Lena Cronqvist’s earlier pictures. Rarely threatening, but more like reminders of something else, a reality parallel to the one we register daily with our five senses. Dance releases unimaginable forces and opens channels to reserves that we do not believe we have, with frightening abysses, but also sustainable bridges over them. In the game Man - Woman, in which we all participate, we soon reach positions that require reinforcements from these reservoirs. When Lena Cronqvist paints, you sense layer upon layer, inexhaustibly.

After the show Cronqvist contacted Bausch, who replied by sending an invitation to join her in Venice, in the early summer of 1985. Here Cronqvist would spend a month, with sketchpad and pen in hand, following the innovative choreographer’s rehearsals, ahead of a festival. Cronqvist had found in Bausch a contemporary source of inspiration whose creative process and working methods came very close to Cronqvist’s own: “It’s a kind of clipping technique with snapshots that Pina Bausch uses. She enlarges, cuts out gestures and movements, to include the desolation and emptiness in the pauses between life and life [sic.],” Lena Cronqvist states in a letter from Venice. For Cronqvist, Pina Bausch, and her repertoire, was a revelation: “I had been doing so much with myself. It was nice to have something that was close, but still not directly about me.”

Provenance

Galerie Belle, Västerås, Sweden.

Sivert Oldenvi Collection, Stockholm.

Bukowskis, Stockholm, Sale H066, Sivert Oldenvi Collection, 20 September 2023, lot 85.

Firestorm (acquired at the above sale).

Exhibitions

Galleri F15, Moss, Norway, Lena Cronqvist, January 1987.

Konstakademien (Royal Academy of Fine Arts), Stockholm, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 7 – 29 March 1987, no. 52.

Västerås konstmuseum & Galerie Belle, Västerås, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 4 – 20 April 1987, no. 52.

Länsmuseet Gävle, Gävle, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 3 May – 8 June 1987, no. 52.

Skövde konsthall, Skövde, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, July – August 1987, no. 52.

Västerbottens museum, Umeå, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 5 September – 18 Oktober 1987, no. 52.

Sundsvalls museum, Sundsvall, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt. En utställning sammanställd av Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, 31 October – 13 December 1987, no. 52.

Norræna húsið, Reykjavik, Lena Cronqvist, 18 June – 10 July 1988.

Värmlands museum, Karlstad, Sweden, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt, January 1992, no. 2.

Liljevalchs konsthall (Liljevalch’s Public Art Gallery), Stockholm, 2 September – 16 October 1994.

Literature

Sveriges Allmänna Konstförening, Lena Cronqvist. Retrospektivt och aktuellt, exhibition catalogue, 1987, illustrated full page, p. 45.

Sune Nordgren, Lena Cronqvist, 1990, mentioned p. 36 and illustrated full page in colour, p. 37.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation