Cecilia Edefalk

Painter of repetition.

Cecilia Edefalk paints the same motif over and over again, exploring how an image changes.

Cecilia Edefalk was born in 1954 and trained as an artist in Stockholm in the 1980s. She made her breakthrough around 1990 and quickly became one of the most talked-about Swedish painters of her generation, at a time when many felt that painting had had its day.

Her method is based on repetition. She takes a motif, often an image taken from a magazine, a photograph or a sculpture, and paints it again and again. Best known is the series Echo from the early 1990s, in which the same scene of a man rubbing lotion into a woman’s back recurs across several canvases. Each version differs slightly from the last in colour, sharpness and size. The image slips away and becomes an echo of itself.

Edefalk works with thin, delicate paint and light tones, often in a way that recalls memories or dreams. She has also painted portraits, plants and antique sculpted heads, and in recent years she has also made sculptures and worked with photography. What unites the works is the question of how an image changes when it is looked at for a long time, copied and recreated.

She has exhibited at museums and galleries in Sweden and abroad, and her work is held by Moderna Museet, among others. Critics have singled out her work as one of the most important contributions to Swedish painting since 1990, and her patient, reflective way of working has influenced many younger painters.