Mamma Andersson: The Lost Paradise

This volume celebrates the Swedish artist Mamma Andersson’s new body of work—melancholic, evocatively colored paintings that explore femininity, fantasy, and memory.

Andersson’s works embody a new genre of landscape painting that recalls late nineteenth-century romanticism while also embracing a contemporary interest in layered, psychological compositions. Her panoramic scenes draw inspiration from a wide range of archival photographic source materials, filmic imagery, theater sets, and period interiors as well as the sparse topography of northern Sweden, where she grew up. The paintings utilize a selection of motifs from throughout her career: barren branches and thick-barked pine trees, domestic interiors, horses, and young women. Resembling still lifes, they further a tradition of quiet, dreamlike domestic scenes by Scandinavian artists such as Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916) and Edvard Munch (1863–1944). Part of a self-conscious eff