Kristina Hagman: Abridged essay by Gerhard Kolberg
In all her paintings, drawings and graphics, which at first glance seem primarily involved with aspects of the erotic, she reveals her independence. At a second, more intensive glance, her sensitive and subtle observation of the complex psychological moods between man and woman become evident. Kristina Hagman paints scenes of everyday life, scenes of lovers and persons which go beyond the erotic to convey symbolic and metaphorical levels of meaning. Her remark about the persons she portrays from the world around her is revealing: “When they take their clothes off, they tell me a lot with their body language.”…. In these works, the sensitivity and atmosphere of her personal style is at its epitome. References to both the American realism of the 1970’s and to German, but more to the light French expressionism around Matisse are inherent in her works. Kristina Hagman’s pictorial scenes do not have the effect of being posed, but rather relived and thus give the impression of being very close to life. The tender love between two people is captured, as are also the strong passions, which can lead to spontaneous revelations as well as to such questionable assurance as: “He Needs Me”. Just how ambivalent the simultaneous experience of emotional and physical love between man and woman can be has been depicted by Kristina Hagman in her two expressive gouaches, which psychologically she has reduced to essentials, naming the one, very simply, “The Hand”, and the other, “She Thinks He is Funny”. As nervous as the expressive ornamentation and calligraphy of these works are, as uncertain is presumably the relationship between the two persons portrayed. A number of scenes of waking men or men lying awake next to their sleeping lover- disposed both by curiosity and by suspicion- seem to suggest thoughts about the uncertainties, the ups and downs between love and doubt, between solicitude and isolation…. Also Kristina Hagman’s paintings of a college friend doing trivial, everyday things such as reading the morning newspaper are expressions of tranquility and with full sympathy….
« less
