The Ice

The painting has the feel of a blurry amateur photograph of a nuclear family. The mother, father and younger girl are warmly dressed. The older girl stands by herself in a jacket she has outgrown and without a hat in the cold winter weather. Her parted hair is held firmly in place by a blood-red bow.

The artist depicts the psychological drama that unfolds between the family members. The mother, father and younger child are rendered dark and sketchy. The girl, who stands by herself in the centre of the painting, is the only one who has a natural complexion. Her arms hang limply by her sides, and her entire figure gives the impression of isolation and loneliness.

Witnesses to exclusion

It is common to interpret Isen as a depiction of Lena Cronqvist's own childhood and family. The adults give the impression of something threatening, of being the source of the older child's sense of loneliness and abandonment. The artistic expression assumes an almost therapeutic character, and it can seem as if the image is a form of sharing a confidence. We who view the painting can identify with the girl and witness her exclusion.

Human vulnerability is given visual form in large parts of Cronqvist's art, which has often been interpreted biographically. Isen can be perceived as a childhood memory, an old photograph the artist has found in the family album and used as a starting point for the painting. The two children stand between their mother and father on the shores of an icy fjord. The ice covers a little over half the image. A cold, pale winter sky looms above. Isen can be interpreted as neglect – and the title becomes a metaphor for the cold to which the older girl is exposed. The season and the colours can also be perceived symbolically, as a mental state.

Loneliness and lack of togetherness characterise the entire series Familiebilder (Family Pictures). Isen is part of this series, along with Vägen, 1976, where the child literally stands in the way of the parents, and Häcken, 1976, where the trees separate the father from the mother and the child so that the child is left standing between the parents.

Private and universal themes

Cronqvist was almost 40 years old when she painted Isen, which reflects the adult artist's perspective on her childhood. The situations the artist depicts in many of her paintings often draw on her own experiences. The fact that she often uses her own features in the faces of the people in her works contributes to her art being interpreted autobiographically.  But the existential themes such as love, childhood, motherhood, loneliness and death that she touches on in her art are not only private, but also general and universal.

Biography

Cronqvist's style is figurative, objective and expressive. The images are characterised as literary because they are often based on her own experiences. She was born in Karlstad, Sweden in 1938, and studied at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design from 1958–59 and at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1959–64, and has exhibited in the Nordic countries, Paris and New York. Her work has been purchased by most of the art museums and collections in Sweden and by the National Museum in Oslo.