En blomma slog ut i mina tankar [A flower bloomed in my thoughts]

En blomma slog ut i mina tankar (A flower bloomed in my thoughts) was originally included in Lena Cronqvist’s legendary debut solo exhibition at Galerie Pierre, Stockholm in November 1965. The exhibition was preceded by studies at Konstfack (The National College of Arts, Crafts and Design), Stockholm (1958 - 1959) and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (1959 - 1964).

Around this time (the mid-1960s) many of Cronqvist’s peers found inspiration in international directions such as pop art and photorealism. Cronqvist, however, distanced herself from the impersonal aesthetics that characterized these directions and carved out a highly personalised painterly path for herself. Karin Sidén (Museum Director, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm) writes (in Lena Cronqvist, exhibition catalogue, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm, 2020):

Lena Cronqvist’s artistic oeuvre is impressively rich and provocatively multi-layered. Her constant pursuit of artistic work - ‘the flow’- seems to be a vital necessity for her, serving as a language and a means of communication, both inwards with her own emotional and spiritual life and outwards with her audience and the world. With her inquisitive approach, mixing a lust for knowledge with honest truth-seeking, Lena Cronqvist has created a visual universe that is all her own. Fundamental existential questions and the rich scale of emotional life are visualised in her work in concentrated compositions and gestures, regardless of medium or technique.

Cronqvist’s work from the 1960s is often small in size/format, brilliantly colourful and straightforward in its appeal. Common motifs include scenes with mothers and children, landscapes and genre scenes from her travels abroad, monkeys (which she studied at the Stockholm open-air museum Skansen) and scenes from butcher’s shops! Monkeys and animal carcasses are, of course, painterly themes made famous by Francis Bacon (1909 - 1992) in the post war years and, as has been pointed out by various art historians, Bacon’s raw, unsettling work, together with Edvard Munch’s (1863 - 1944) symbolism, seemed more interesting and inspiring to Cronqvist in the 1960s than the abstract, informalist works that then dominated the Swedish art scene. Malin Hedlin writes (in ‘Lena Cronqvists bildvärld’, article in Lena Cronqvist, exhibition catalogue, Liljevalchs konsthall [Liljevalchs Public Art Gallery], Stockholm & Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1994):

Lena Cronqvist chose an expressionist narrative in her pictures. An artist who was important to her during this time was Francis Bacon. In her early paintings, you can see a clear kinship with his work. Not only in the intrusive existential motifs, but also in the structure of the images; in the colors, shapes and lines and in the distorted, or shifted, perspective. She also found inspiration in artists such as Ernst Josephson, Siri Derkert, Carl Fredrik Hill, Munch and Picasso. She had her first separate exhibition in 1965 at Galerie Pierre in Stockholm. The critics wrote, in positive terms, about her use of colour. But they also mentioned the underlying duality of her work; the tragic, disturbing and sometimes disgusting which is delicately balanced against the lustful and humorous. At Pierre, among other things, Cronqvist showed Ta det piano Hans, Flykten till södern and En blomma slog ut i mina tankar. The latter represents a girl, whose forehead is a window into her thoughts.

Signed and dated ‘L. Cronqvist -65’.

Provenance

Galerie Pierre, Stockholm, Lena Cronqvist, November 1965, no. 10.

Private collection.

Bukowskis, Stockholm, Contemporary & Design, 18 May 2011, lot 346.

Private collection (acquired at the above sale).

Uppsala Auktionskammare, Stockholm, Important Sale, 12 - 14 November 2024, lot 973.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above sale).

Exhibitions

Galerie Pierre, Stockholm, Lena Cronqvist, November 1965, no. 10.

Literature

Lena Cronqvist, exhibition catalogue, Liljevalchs konsthall (Liljevalchs Public Art Gallery), Stockholm & Konsthallen, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1994, mentioned in article by Malin Hedlin.

Copyright Firestorm Foundation