My Father’s Landscape

Jaakko Heikkinen and Niilo Hyttinen Visiting Tarvaspää

The Gallen-Kallela Museum 4 February - 14 May 2006

This exhibition at the Gallen-Kallela Museum bring together two contemporary artists, Niilo Hyttinen (born 1940 at Puolanka), an artist with a long and established career, and Jaakko Heikkinen (born 1969 at Suomussalmi) of the younger generation. Both have created forceful imagery of the people of the Kainuu region of Northeast Finland and their landscapes of the mind.

My Father’s Landscape is a visual statement addressing a countryside undergoing change. Hyttinen’s works markedly reflect the restructuring processes of the 1960s and 1970s, the rapid urbanization of Finland and internal migration that depopulated rural villages. The characters depicted by Hyttinen are heartrendingly anchored in the political debate of the 1970s on the economic viability of outlying regions and the desertion of farms. The artist found his subjects in his home region, where the signs of change were clearly evident.

In Heikkinen’s paintings today’s farmers carry on their lives in the rural landscape, where quiet country roads afford a place for idle moments. Like Hyttinen, Heikkinen portrays his immediate surroundings, presenting his unvarnished view of the Finnish countryside in the 2000s, of moments transcending everyday life as moods change from the boisterous to the melancholy.

Both artists have addressed their professional identity in self-portraits in which the viewer encounters the artist’s sensitivity and vulnerability. Niilo Hyttinen’s artist ego is shown in the role of a dignified prince apparent and as an ageing artist walking with a stick. Jaakko Heikkinen’s early self-portraits display playful bluster and seriousness that inevitably bring to images of the Finnish artist Jalmari Ruokokoski (1886-1936) in his youth. In later connection, Heikkinen has placed himself in stirring situations all the way to the wee hours of the morning.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela provides the historical perspective of the exhibition. He, too, recorded in his paintings a way of life that was on the brink of change in Finland. His honeymoon to Kainuu did not, however, produce depictions of the common people. Instead, the artist found appeal in ethnographic material and the untouched natural environment of the region, which was to live on in his memory as a mythically beautiful treasury of themes related to the Kalevala epic. A historical reference is also provided by Niilo Hyttinen’s comments on works by Hugo Simberg.

My Father's Landscape focuses on Niilo Hyttinen's works of the 1960s and 1970s and works by Jaakko Heikkinen from 2003-2005.