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The latter quality could very well place him and an Italian colleague, Mimmo Palladino, in the same group. But aside from a few thematic parallels, Widenfalk's position in what one could call the archaized art of our time, seems to be different. His formal links rather bring to mind a Swedish, and more expressive sculpting tradition, which Bror Hjort initiated in the 1920s. His anti-cultural vitalism built to a great extent upon borrowed elements of the "primitive" folk art and its coarsely chiselled figuration and ornamentation, while an artist such as Bror Marklund a decade later added an Egyptian, far more supple shape to his art. |
The self-assured, confident type ideal of classicism is
something remote to Widenfalk's unobtrusive and intimate
figures. But his silent characters still appear robust. Even
those that are smaller in size, not only because he often
leaves central parts of his pieces as raw cuts, or on
account that the material in itself gives them an aura of
heavy, physical presence. It is rather his insistence upon
the simple, almost naïve form in both figures and
objects which creates this special effect of gathered,
compact mass. One could say that Widenfalk proximates the
robustness in his simplified forms through the truly ethnic
of this part of the world - the old Norse folk art. On the
other hand, he may arrive at this robust quality by means of
the form, which seems inspired by the pre-classicist or
archaic sculpture.
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