Mamma Andersson

This monograph gathers recent paintings by Swedish artist Mamma Andersson, works with a wistful mood and vivid color that probe womanhood, imagined worlds and recollection. Andersson draws on old photographs, movie stills, stage sets and historical interiors, along with the bare landscape of the north of Sweden where she was raised. Her wide, panoramic canvases bring together bare trees and dense pines, household rooms, horses and young women.

The pictures have a stillness that echoes still life, and they carry on a Scandinavian tradition of hushed, dreamlike domestic scenes associated with Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944). Andersson's approach is looser and more abstract than in her earlier work, aiming to convey a felt experience rather than a particular moment. Full-color reproductions reveal the surface of the paint, its textured strokes, thin washes and sharp graphic lines.

The book includes a new essay by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It accompanies the exhibition of the same name held at David Zwirner in New York in 2020.