Akseli Gallen-Kallela
Encyclopedia
was a Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
who is best known for his illustrations of the Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
, the Finnish national epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
(illustration, below). His work was considered very important for the Finnish national identity. He changed his name from Gallen to Gallen-Kallela in 1907.
Life
Gallen-Kallela was born Axel Waldemar Gallén in PoriPori
Pori is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäenjoki river, which is the largest in Finland. Pori is the most important town in the Satakunta region....
, Finland in a Swedish-speaking family. His father Peter Gallén worked as police chief and lawyer. At the age of 11 he was sent to Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
to study at a grammar school, because his father opposed his ambition to become a painter. After his father's death in 1879, Gallen-Kallela attended drawing classes at the Finnish Art Society (1881-4) and studied privately under Adolf von Becker.
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, to study at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
. In Paris he became friends with the Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt
Albert Edelfelt
Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt was a Swedish-speaking Finnish painter.Albert Edelfelt was born in Porvoo, Finland. His father Carl Albert was an architect. Edelfelt admired the poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who was a friend of the family...
, the Norwegian painter Adam Dörnberger, and the Swedish writer August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...
.
He married Mary Slöör in 1890. The couple had three children, Impi Marjatta, Kirsti and Jorma
Jorma Gallen-Kallela
Jorma Gallen-Kallela was a Finnish artist. He followed in the footsteps of his father, the famed artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela....
. On their honeymoon to East Karelia
East Karelia
East Karelia , also rendered as Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that since the Treaty of Stolbova in 1617 has remained Christian Orthodox under Russian supremacy. It is separated from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or historically Swedish...
, Gallen-Kallela started collecting material for his depictions of the Kalevala. This period is characterized by romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
paintings of the Kalevala, like the Aino triptych, and by several landscape paintings.
In December 1894, Gallen-Kallela moved to Berlin to oversee the joint exhibition of his works with the works of Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
painter Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
. Here he became acquainted with the Symbolists.
In March 1895, he received a telegram that his daughter Impi Marjatta had died from diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
. This would prove to be a turning point in his work. While his works had previously been romantic, after his daughter's death Gallen-Kallela painted more aggressive works like the Defense of the Sampo, Joukahainen's Revenge, and Lemminkäinen's Mother.
On his return from Germany, Gallen studied print-making and visited London to deepen his knowledge, and in 1898 studied fresco-painting in Italy.
Exposition Universelle (1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from April 15 to November 12, 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next...
in 1900, Gallen-Kallela painted fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
es for the Finnish Pavilion. In these frescoes, his political ideas became most apparent. One of the vipers in the fresco Ilmarinen Plowing the Field of Vipers is wearing the Romanov
Romanov
The House of Romanov was the second and last imperial dynasty to rule over Russia, reigning from 1613 until the February Revolution abolished the crown in 1917...
crown, and the process of removing the vipers from the field was a clear reference to his wish for an independent Finland.
The Paris Exposition secured Gallen-Kallela's stature as the leading Finnish artist. In 1901 he was commissioned to paint the fresco, Kullervo Goes to War, for the concert hall of the Helsinki Student's Union. Between 1901 and 1903 he painted the frescoes for the Jusélius Mausoleum in Pori, memorializing the 11-year-old daughter of the industrialist F.A. Jusélius. (The frescoes were soon damaged by dampness, and were completely destroyed by fire in December 1931. Jusélius assigned the artist's son Jorma to repaint them from the original sketches. The reconstruction was completed just before Jorma's death in 1939.)
Gallen-Kallela officially finnicized his name to the more Finnish-sounding Akseli Gallen-Kallela in 1907.
In 1909, Gallen-Kallela moved to Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
in Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
with his family, and there he painted over 150 expressionist oil-paintings and bought many east African artefacts. But he returned to Finland after a couple of years, because he realized Finland was his main inspiration. Between 1911 and 1913 he designed and built a studio and house at Tarvaspää
Tarvaspää
Tarvaspää or the Gallen-Kallela Museum, located in Espoo, Finland and built between 1911 and 1913 was a home and studio for Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Tarvaspää has been a museum since 1961.- External links :*...
, about 10 km north of the centre of Helsinki.
In 1918, Gallen-Kallela and his son Jorma took part in the fighting at the front of the Finnish Civil War
Finnish Civil War
The Finnish Civil War was a part of the national, political and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The Civil War concerned control and leadership of The Grand Duchy of Finland as it achieved independence from Russia after the October Revolution in Petrograd...
. When the regent, General Mannerheim
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War, Commander-in-Chief of Finland's Defence Forces during World War II, Marshal of Finland, and a Finnish statesman. He was Regent of Finland and the sixth President of Finland...
, later heard about this, he invited Gallen-Kallela to design the flags, official decorations and uniforms for the newly independent Finland. In 1919 he was appointed aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
to Mannerheim.
From December 1923 to May 1926, Gallen-Kallela lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities., and where he visited the Taos art-colony in New Mexico to study indigenous American art. In 1925 he began the illustrations for his "Great Kalevala". This was still unfinished when he died of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
on 7 March 1931, while returning from a lecture in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
.
His studio and house at Tarvaspää was opened as the Gallen-Kallela Museum in 1961; it houses some of his works and research facilities on Gallen-Kallela himself.
Paintings
- Boy with a Crow (Poika ja varis) (1884)
- The Old Woman and the Cat (Akka ja kissa) (1885)
- Démasquée (1888)
- Ahlström family (1890)
- The Aino triptych (Aino-taru) (1891)
- Mäntykoski Waterfall (1892)
- A Winter Scene From Imatra (1893)
- The Forging of the Sampo (Sammon taonta) (1893)
- Jean SibeliusJean SibeliusJean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
(1894) - The Defense of the SampoThe Defense of the SampoThe Defense of the Sampo is a 1896 Romantic nationalist painting by Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The painting illustrates a passage from the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century....
(Sammon puolustus) (1896) - LemminkäinenLemminkäinenLemminkäinen or Lemminki is a prominent figure in Finnish mythology. He is one of the Heroes of the Kalevala, where his character is a composition of several separate heroes of oral poetry. He is usually depicted as young and good looking, with wavy blonde hair.The original, mythological...
's Mother (Lemminkäisen äiti) (1897) - The Fratricide (Velisurmaaja) (1897)
- Joukahainen's Revenge (Joukahaisen kosto) (1897)
- Symposion (1894)
- KullervoKullervoIn the Finnish Kalevala, Kullervo was the ill-fated son of Kalervo. He is the only irredeemably tragic character in Finnish mythology.-Rune 31 - Kullervo, son of Evil:...
's Curse (Kullervon kirous) (1899) - Kullervo Rides to War (Kullervon sotaanlähtö) (1901)
- Lake Keitele (1905), at the National GalleryNational Gallery, LondonThe National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
in LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its... - Ad Astra (1907)
- Väinämöinen's Boat Journey (1909)