Tag: finland

Severin Falkman

Severin Falkman, “Antonio”, 1870, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 74 cm, Finnish National Gallery

Born in Stockholm in April of 1831, Severin Gabriel Falkman was a Swedish-born painter who was one of the pioneers of Karelianism, a late nineteenth-century art and literary movement in the Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1835, Finnish author Elias Lönnrot published his compilation of oral folklore and mythology from the Karelian and Finnish traditions. The cultural sections of Finland’s society became curious about the heritage of the historical, eastern province of Finnish Karelia. Gradually, this interest in Finland’s heritage  developed into the Karelian movement, a Finnish version of European National Romanticism. 

The youngest of four children born into the merchant family of Hans Johan and Sofia Falkman, Severin Falkman relocated with his family to Finland in the 1840s. He received his initial education at the private Helsinki Lyceum and, in 1848, became one of the first students of the Finnish Art Association’s school of drawing. From 1857 to 1861, Falkman studied in Paris under French history painter Thomas Couture who taught such artists as Édouard Manet and William Morris Hunt.

After beginning an extended art study tour of Europe, Falkman studied at the University of Helsinki and the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. For a period, he was also a student of painter and printmaker Christian Forssell, who held the position of Professor of Drawing at Stockholm’s Academy of Art. Between 1864 and 1870, Falkman worked and painted in Rome, Paris and Munich. 

In 1870, Severin Falkman returned to Finland where he settled in Helsinki. He was given permission in 1872 by the Helsinki City Museum to build a studio for himself within its structure; it is now the oldest remaining artist studio in the museum and currently open for public viewing. After undertaking a photographic trip to the eastern area of Finland, Falkman published an account of its people and ethnographic objects in his 1885 “I Östra Finland (In Eastern Finland)”.

During his lifetime, Falkman painted in several genres including portraiture, still life, and scenes, both interior and exterior, that portrayed both local and medieval figures. His most important painting is the 1880-1886 historical painting “Karl Knutson Bonde Leaving Vyborg Castle for the Royal Election in Stockholm 1448”, now housed in the Finnish National Gallery. An example of the Finnish Karelianist movement, the painting conveyed the national romantic message  of Finland’s important role in the political history of Sweden. 

Severin Falkman was a recipient of the Imperial Order of Saint Anna, awarded for a distinguished career in civil service or for valor and service in the military. It entitled recipients to either hereditary nobility or personal nobility. Falkman died in the Finnish city of Helsingfors in July of 1889. His work is in both private and public collections including those of the Helsinki City Museum, the Pori Art Museum of Finland, and the Finnish National Gallery.

Second Insert Image: Severin Falkman, “Easter Procession in Rome”, 1866, Oil on Canvas, 112 x 87 cm, Finnish National Gallery

Bottom Insert Image: Severin Falkman, “Nature Morte (Eurasian Woodcock)”, Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas, 41 x 32.5 cm, Pori Art Museum, Finland

 

Jussi Pirttioja

Jussi Pirttioja, “The Noonday Demon”, 2015, Oil on Canvas

Born in 1988 in Helsinki, Finland, Jussi Pirttioja studied Art at Saimaa University of Applied Sciences in Imatra, with an emphasis on Painting. He further developed his skills in anatomical drawing and portrait painting as an exchange student in the Repin Saint Petersburgh State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

After graduating in 2016 he has been working and living in Lappeenranta. He has held several solo exhibitions and taken part in group shows and competitions in Finland. Pirttioja’s work is a mixture of traditional portraiture with surreal settings and expressionistic flourishes.

Mikko Lagerstedt

Photography by Mikko Lagerstedt

Spending an entire evening under the stars in near pitch darkness, photographer Mikko Lagerstedt captures spectacular landscapes of frozen tundra and misty mornings of Iceland and his native Finland. With a camera mounted on a tripod he takes a multitude of exposures as the light gradually changes. Certain elements are then stitched together digitally and enhanced with Photoshop and Lightroom. The resulting images are a result of hours of photography, editing, and a keen sense of color and composition to create heavily modified images that are almost hyper-realistic.

E. Lundahl

E. Lundahl: Master Bookbinder from Finland

Bookbinding is an artistic craft of great antiquity. It combines skills from other trades such as paper and fabric crafts, leather work, model making, and graphic arts. It requires knowledge about numerous varieties of book structures along with all the internal and external details of assembly. A working knowledge of the materials involved is required.

Reblogged with many thanks to the artist: http://veterokforbooks.tumblr.com.

Visit the site. Inquire. Hardbound books, leather, herbs and arcane ephemera.

Hugo Simberg

Hugo Simberg, “The Wounded Angel’”, Oil on Canvas, 1903

The “Wounded Angel” is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. It is one of the most recognizable of Simberg’s works, and was voted Finland’s “national painting” in a vote held by the Ateneum art museum in 2006.

Like other Simberg works, the atmosphere is melancholic: the angelic central figure with her bandaged forehead and bloodied wing, the sombre clothing of her two youthful bearers. The direct gaze of the right-hand figure touches the viewer.

The procession passes through a recognisable landscape, that of Eläintarha, Helsinki, with Töölönlahti Bay in the background. In Hugo Simberg’s time, the park was a popular spot for leisure-time activities among the working classes. At the time, many charity institutions were located in Eläintarha park. In “The Wounded Angel” the healthy boys are carrying the injured girl towards the Blind Girls’ School and the Home for Cripples. She clutches a bunch of snowdrops, symbolic of healing and rebirth.

Simberg himself declined to offer any deconstruction, suggesting that the viewer draw their own conclusions. However it is known that Simberg had been suffering from meningitis, and that the painting was a source of strength during his recovery. This can also be read metaphorically: meningitis is known to cause neck stiffness, lethargy and light sensitivity, each of which is exhibited by the central figure.

Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Photography;  Self Portraits in Nature by Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen has been capturing self-portraits of his nude body in natural surroundings for the better part of five decades. Minkkinen fully merges his limbs and torso like a chameleon, blurring the lines between where the world ends and his body begins.

The methods used to create these bold and uninhibited shots pre-date the use of Photoshop by decades, instead relying on a simple 9-second shutter release that allows Minkkinen to quickly pose for each shot. What may appear as a simply composed photo with fortuitous timing, is often the result of Minkkinen taking dangerous risks as he submerges himself in strong currents, buries himself in ice, or balances precariously on the edge of a cliff.

At the age of 70, Minkkinen was just awarded the 2015 Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and is currently finishing work on his 8th book. His first-ever solo show was in November of 2015 in Chicago at the Catherine Edelman Gallery and entitled “7 8 9 0 1″.

“Many of my photographs are difficult to make. Some can even be dangerous. I do not want to have someone else coming in harm’s way taking the risks I need to take: to lean out off a cliff or stay underwater for the sake of my picture. We control how much pain we can tolerate; such information is unknowable by anyone else. Some of my pictures might look simple, but in reality they can test the limits of what a human body is capable of or willing to risk.” -Amo Rafael Minkkinen

Tuomas Korpi

Artwork by Tuomas Korpi

Tuomas Korpi is an illustrator, production designer and matte painter from Finland. He has worked professionally in the entertainment and advertising industry since 2005. He also had studied architecture at Helsinki University of Technology. Thomas Korpi currently lives in Helsinki, Finland,  and works as an illustrator, designer and art director at Studio Piñata, a Helsinki based animation and illustration studio.