Landscape with Church (1969) is reminiscent of the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich’s views of villages seen from a distance. Bengtsson was in the habit of finishing his paintings by ironing them to make them look older, like relics from the past. What the picture does remind us of is the long shadow cast by history over the present. In the lower left-hand corner is a swastika in a white circle, the Nazi emblem. It sits there like a brand. Even in a small Swedish village lurk veiled fascist or Nazi tendencies. In this way, Bengtsson uses Romantic painting’s evocative atmosphere to say something about our society.
Kristoffer Arvidsson from The Collection Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg 2014