The Helsinki exhibition celebrates 12 undervalued female artists
AthenaeumPart of the State Art Museum, it has been a great exhibition of Finland’s greatest artists, men and women, since its opening in 1888. Unlike other Western countries, Finland has supported men and women with art education and grants since the establishment of the national art collection. was founded in the 19th century. It is no surprise, then, that Finland was the first European country in which women voted in 1906. Thanks to the Finnish Art Association’s ranking of artists of both sexes, women artists are known nationwide. The Finnish Art Association acquired its first women’s work in 1859, and since 1861 it has acquired women’s work almost every year. The new exhibition, The Modern Woman, aims to raise the profile of 12 female artists internationally.
The Ateneum’s permanent collection includes more than 20,000 national treasures by Finnish artists such as Albert Edelfelt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck and Ellen Thesleff, as well as international masterpieces by Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Paul Gauguin, Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh. The museum has generously lent to museums outside Finland, including works by Helene Schjerfbeck, which will be on display in the United Kingdom for the first time in London. Royal Academy in 2019.
Well timed International Women’s Day8.3.2022 Ateneum’s Modern Woman exhibition celebrates the contribution of twelve pioneering Finnish women artists to 20th century modernism: Helene Schjerfbeck, Sigrid Schauman, Ellen Thesleff, Elga Sesemann, Hilda Flodin, Sigrid af Forselles, Eil Grönvik, Gunlavor Hiltunen, Lea Laila Pillinen and Essi Renvall. The exhibition of about 150 works includes paintings, sculptures, drawings and graphics from the Ateneum collection. Their significant work deserves much wider visibility outside Finland, and this performance has contributed to it. The exhibition, designed for an international touring exhibition, opened at Scandinavian house In New York in 2017, traveled to the Millesgården Art Museum in Stockholm 2018, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo 2019 and GL Strand in Copenhagen 2021. It will be on display at the Ateneum until March 27, 2022.
This thoughtfully organized exhibition puts these twelve works by women in the midst of social, political, and cultural changes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thanks to scholarships and international travel opportunities, Finnish Women Artists were able to develop a thriving career as an artist. Traveling to artistic centers such as Paris and Florence broadened their horizons as they developed their own networks and became acquainted with various new influences.
Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is perhaps the only artist in the Modern Woman exhibition known outside Finland. He traveled extensively and studied and worked in Paris in the 1880s and collaborated with artists in Pont Aven, Brittany and St. Ives, Cornwall. His paintings, especially self-portraits depicting aging, are amazingly good and deserve a wider audience.
Ukrainian-born Sigrid Schauman (1877-1979) attended art school in Helsinki, where her teachers included Helene Schjerfbeck and her works were first presented at the Ateneum in 1901. Her travels to Italy, Paris and Egypt, as well as a meeting with a couple of artists, influenced Sonia and Robert Delaunay. All of this and exposure to French-influenced modernism, impressionism, and post-impressionism inspires brighter colors and cold landscapes of light. Her minimalist female nudes like Model1958 also deserves a wider audience.
Elga Sesemann (1922-2007) was a brave colorist who was influenced by German expressionism, surrealism and metaphysical art. His painted portraits, urban landscapes, and lonely characters have a melancholy vibe, probably because his career began during World War II. He did pastel and gouache work, but his passionate painting technique is best seen in the thick layers of oil paint applied with a palette knife.
The sculptor Essi Renvall (1911-1979), best known for his pictures of women and children, was one of the first female sculptors in Finland to receive commissioned work and experience them. Impressive bronze sculpture The old man thinks, 1900 is Hilda Flodin (1877–1958), who studied in Italy and Paris, where she assisted Auguste Rodin. There he also enjoyed Menage à trois with Rodin and his model and lover, the Welsh painter Gwen John. According to Anu Utriainen, curator of the exhibition, Flodin was the definition of “a modern new woman who dominates her own body and life and is socially independent.”
Also this month, the Ateneum will have a magnificent contemporary exhibition, Dialogue: Elina Brotherus and Hannele Rantala, which presents works by two Finnish female photographers who, in addition to their independent practices, have worked in dialogue together for more than two decades. Typically, the duo’s way of working is that the works in the exhibition have been made in accordance with the themes, quotes and assignments set by the artists. Some assignments are based on quotes from One-Minute Sculptures by Yoko Ono and Erwin Wurmin. The artists responded to tasks such as “turn off the lights in the room and see what’s left. Build a maze and see what you find in the middle of it” and “find the edge of the water and listen to its sound”.
The Modern Woman exhibition is complemented by the guide “select works by forgotten female photographers and make a parallel work”. With this proposal, the duo will be inspired by a number of unknown or forgotten female creators from the literary and artistic side, from Nordic poet Edith Södergran to photographers such as Hilja Ravinemi and Emmi Fock.
After these two exhibitions, the Ateneum Museum will be closed for nine months due to renovations, and the director of the museum, Marja Sakari, will oversee the renovation of the permanent collection. In the meantime, art lovers can enjoy art at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiasmawhen it reopens after a year of extensive renovations on April 8, 2022 at ARS22, the latest in one of the world’s oldest recurring exhibitions of contemporary art.