Lena Cronqvist

In his essay ‘Lena Cronqvist och det absolut nödvändiga’, SAK 2003, Mårten Castenfors describes the artist's paintings in the 1990s as painterly representations of small figures. They are young girls grimacing in a world of growing pains, feigned innocence and childish cruelty. ‘The girls of the 1990s stubbornly turn and twist dolls and cats: they bathe, drown, strangle and bathe with the same sad pleasure.’

The girls, with their defiant and serious demeanour, seem to be placed in an adultless environment where their seemingly innocent play is charged with dark undertones. At the same time as the girls become more and more disfigured in painting, the motifs also find their three-dimensional form in Cronqvist's sculptures of terracotta and bronze. On both large and small scales, the small figures exude psychological credibility, independence and strength. They rule and reign over their own world, be it a stone, a tub or water.

The painting ‘Skvallerbytta’ in tempera and oil on canvas is dated 1991 (illustrated full page p. 160 in ‘Lena Cronqvist, Målningar 1964-1994’, Galleri Lars Boman, Stockholm, 1994). The motif ‘Tattletale’ exists as a sculpture in three versions executed in 1993-94, of which the auction's sculpture is version III.