Den växande familjen (The Growing Family)

In Bertil Bagare’s 1974 sculpture The Growing Family, a family stands together surrounded by a semicircle meant to represent the Earth. The artistic idiom is extremely simplified, but among the angular shapes we see the family members’ time-typical hairstyles and the mother’s growing tummy.

Is the boat shape we see in the smiling older child’s hands a reference to Noah’s Ark? Both the biblical story and the sculptor’s depiction can be said to be about the continuation of life and rebirth in new generations. With this work, the artist wanted to link the ecological circle of life in the park with human propagation.

The work depicts an optimistic view of the alternation of generations in general, but there are also those who have a more personal relationship to the motif. While he was working on the sculpture, Bertil Bagare’s son and his wife were expecting their third child and the artist used their family as a model for his bronze figures. What do you see in the sculpture?

Bertil Bagare Kindgren (1913-2002) was a self-taught artist and the brother of two other artists: Maj Morin and Lennart Kindgren. Bertil Kindgren was a baker by trade and did not embark on his artistic career until he was in his fifties. Hence his artist name, Bagare, which is the Swedish word for baker.