The year 2009 marks the 160th anniversary of the publication of the Kalevala epic in its presently known form. In honour of the event, the museum will present Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s studies and drafts for illustrations for the so-called Great Kalevala project from its own collections. Gallen-Kallela had made sketches for Kalevala illustrations in the early stages of his career in the 1880s and in 1906 alongside his work of illustrating Aleksis Kivi’s novel The Seven Brothers. He published his final plan for a grand version of the Kalevala in the journal Valvoja in 1909. This 700-page book was to be painted and inscribed on parchment, with 150 miniature paintings and over half of the pages decorated with painting, gold and silver. The covers were to be of leather and chased silver and ornamented with Finnish stones and freshwater pearls. The book was intended as the artist’s gift to the Finnish people, and he envisioned it to be placed in the National Museum’s room devoted to the Kalevala and Elias Lönnrot, who had collected and compiled the material of the epic.
The grandiose plan, however, was never realized. Gallen-Kallela made most of the sketches for the Great Kalevala illustrations in 1925–26. The first of these were prepared while staying in Taos, New Mexico: “I have made four full-blown Kalevala pictures here like newly baked bread.” The bright colour scale and decorative ornament of these works reflect the influence of American Indian art. This large-scale project was intended to be the culmination of Gallen-Kallela’s long career in the arts but remained unfinished. Though only five of the 50 runes of the Kalevala were illustrated, they reveal Gallen-Kallela’s manner of interpreting and adapting the themes of the Kalevala to pictorial form and the visual and symbolic richness of the myths of the epic. Had it been completed, this work would have been a summary of the artist’s long career and a visual encyclopaedia of Finnish folklore.
In addition to Gallen-Kallela’s sketches for the Great Kalevala, the exhibition explores the theme further with prints of Kalevala themes and works for the so-called Illustrated Kalevala from the early 1920s.