Mamma Andersson

Mamma Andersson’s subjects often depict space and spatial movement, not just as an idea but also within interior spaces. Interior and exterior landscapes merge, always in the same uniquely restrained colour palette.
In the painting ‘Runda bordet’, dated 2000, she experiments with an inner landscape, putting up and breaking down walls. The children around the table are seated in a wintery outdoor setting. A few children have broken off from the circle, walking away, carrying their burdens on their heads. The body language of the children is carefully and masterly drawn, whilst their facial expressions remain simplified and partly dissolved. With her thematic array of childhood, northern Swedish nature, everyday life and love, Mamma Andersson succeeds in transforming the particular into something general, a stage for the rest of us to see ourselves upon. Her style has been praised both in Sweden and internationally, and she is considered one of the most important Swedish artists living today.

During the 1990s children, and their everyday settings, were a recurrent theme in Mamma Andersson’s work. Several of her most significant paintings on this subject were executed in 2000, as is the case with ‘Runda bordet’, currently on offer at the Contemporary Art & Design auction, and its ‘sister’-paintings ‘Roliga Timmen’, ‘Klassrum’, and ‘Skoldans’. These works showcase Mamma Andersson’s strong connection to art history, her great interest in art books, and in particular her studies of the subjects painted by the artists she most admires. In the painting in the auction we discern Vera Nilsson’s tender portrayals of children at the same time as Ernst Josephson’s curving lines, and Dick Bengtsson’s sophisticated treatment of surfaces.
‘Runda bordet’ was first exhibited at Galleri Magnus Karlsson in the spring of 2000, before her major breakthrough in 2003 at the Venice Biennale. Since then she has had several critically acclaimed solo shows, including at Modena Museet in Stockholm (2007) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark (2021), whilst regularly exhibiting her work with her galleries in Stockholm, London, and New York.