Bukowskis presents Karin Mamma Andersson at this spring’s Contemporary Art & Design sale
Karin Mamma Andersson "Objekt"
Karin Mamma Andersson’s painting "Objekt" was executed in the year 2000, when the millennium was fresh and exciting. That same year she exhibited the painting at Galleri Kavaletten in Stockholm. Could she have even imagined that twenty-five years later she would be considered one of Sweden’s most important contemporary artists, be represented by galleries in three countries, and that her work was to fetch record prices at auction?
The first decade of the 2000s was more or less a golden age for Mamma Andersson. She was productive, succeeding in creating some of her very best paintings, whilst at the same time being represented at major art fairs and biennales. The big breakthroughs came in quick succession, including being awarded the Carnegie Art Award in 2006 and a solo show at Moderna Museet in 2007.
In her long artistic career she merges several classic genres such as still life, landscape painting and interiors, yet her expression remains highly contemporary. The paintings are created as a kind of painterly collage, where image fragments, stories and motifs are joined together in multiple layers. Time and space are fractured, forming new, completely independent worlds.
The architectural elements in Objekt consist of the arch in the painting’s foreground, but also of the angular pools in the centre of the painting. The dramatic, dark landscape in the background is contrasted with an intimate family scene, where a mother, wearing a blue dress, is seated on the ground with her head bowed. Her child is looking away towards an area of snow-capped mountains in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. Diagonally across the picture the artist has placed a flowering cherry blossom branch, not unlike those often seen in Japanese woodcuts. In Japan the cherry blossom is a symbol of the fleeting nature of life and a reminder to appreciate its beauty whilst there is still time. Perhaps it is also a reminder to the mother of all that will be missed if she takes her eyes off her child during those first hectic years when they develop so quickly.
The work is for sale at Bukowskis' Live Auction Contemporary Art & Design.
Estimate 1 500 000 - 2 000 000 SEK
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Karin Mamma Andersson
"Runda bordet"
Karin 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, Karin 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 Karin 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 Karin 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.
The work is for sale at Bukowskis' Live Auction Contemporary Art & Design.
Estimate 1 000 000 - 1 200 000 SEK
Viewing: April 21 – 25, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Open: Weekdays 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 4 pm
Live Auction: April 26 | Stockholm
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Discover the catalogue
Works by Karin Mamma Andersson at Contemporary Art + Design
Vasarahinta
Ei myyty
Lähtöhinta
500 000 - 700 000 SEK
Vasarahinta
20 000 SEK
Lähtöhinta
20 000 - 25 000 SEK
Lisätietoa & kuntoraportteja Ota yhteyttä asiantuntijaamme
Tukholma
Louise Wrede
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Tukholma
Karin Aringer
Asiantuntija – nykytaide ja valokuva
+46 (0)702 63 70 57
Tukholma
Lena Rydén
Johtava taideasiantuntija, moderni- ja 1800-luvun taide
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