The Splendour of Life
– From the Heaths of the Kalevala to the Savannahs of Africa
17 May – 4 September, 2011

Opening hours:
Every day 11–18.

Guided tours in English:
Sundays 26.6., 31.7., and 28.8. at 2 pm.

Guided tours in Russian:
Sundays 5.6., 3.7., and 14.8. at 2 pm.

Tickets:
Adults 8 €
Seniors 6 €
Holders of S-etu
benefit card 7 €
Students 4 €
Free entrance for children and persons under 18.

In association with:

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"I know that before long the wonderful world of art will open up before me and I can enjoy its beauty to my heart's content. In the world, life and nature there are only beautiful stories, and when the door opens, step in and fill your soul." Akseli Gallen-Kallela, sketchbook entry dated 12 November 1894.

The Splendour of Life presents the art of Akseli Gallen-Kallela from the symbolism of the 1890s to the modern currents of art in the early 1900s. The exhibits include paintings, prints, applied art objects, sketches for frescoes and material collected from Africa.

In 1892, Akseli Gallen-Kallela faced new challenges after his trip to Paris, where his Aino Triptych did not meet with expected success at the Salon du Champ de Mars. The myths of the Kalevala epic came to point the way for his new visual idiom. In the present exhibition, the heroes of the Kalevala encounter family portraits of a deep and intellectual tone, which also reveal views of Gallen-Kallela's resin-scented log-built Kalela studio and residence. The ideas of international art nouveau were crystallized in the integrated design of Kalela – in the artist's own words "I want to do everything myself!" The studio-residence's language of form, furniture and objects of applied art, and the works of art that were created there reflect the union of art with a way of life.

Since the 1890s Akseli Gallen-Kallela explicitly developed his career on the European art scene, as shown by his close contacts with the core group of symbolists in Berlin, especially the circle of the magazine Pan. Dating from these years is Gallen-Kallela's portrait of the German actor Rudolf Rittner, who was renowned for his interpretations of Ibsen. Akseli Gallen-Kallela was at the apex of his career around the time of the Paris World's Fair of 1900, for which he painted the frescoes of the Finnish pavilion. In Finland, he painted frescoes for the mausoleum of the daughter of the businessman J. F. Jusélius in Pori, the town where he had been born. The exhibition features preparatory work and sketches for the Jusélius frescoes, which were destroyed in a fire.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela was involved in complex in historical developments of the early 20th century. In early 1905 he moved back to the centre of Helsinki to a studio and apartment, where a Finnish-nationalist artist community called Pirtti (Cabin) held exhibitions. In the summer of the same year, he participated in founding the magazine Zhupel, which voiced opposition to the tsarist government. In Finland, the general strike of late 1905 was both a popular uprising against Russian rule and an episode of internal political strife. In 1906, Gallen-Kallela hid the revolutionary Russian author Maxim Gorky in his Pirtti studio and painted portraits of him.

During the following years, as Akseli Gallen-Kallela's life sometimes became unnecessarily exciting, he would travel to the inland on hunting expeditions. This was also the beginning of his many winter landscapes. Gallen-Kallela travelled with a camera, using it as an aid to document charred stand-dried pines and broken tree trunks. He spent the summers at Heposaari Island near the Porkkala Peninsula, where he prepared illustrations to Aleksis Kivi's novel Seitsemän veljestä (The Seven Brothers). In 1907, the artist officially changed his name from the Swedish Axel Gallén to the Fennicized Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

When confronted with the breakthrough of modern art, Gallen-Kallela had to redefine his artistic credo. Moving to urbanized Paris in 1908 into the midst of a tumultuous art scene left its mark on Gallen-Kallela's works and soul alike. The colour scale that had glowed during his stay in British East Africa dried up after the artist's return to Finland. With his official reputation as 'national artist', Gallen-Kallela was criticized in cartoons and by the radical general of expressionist artists.