MODERN WOMEN: FINNISH ART IN AN EVENTFUL ERA

Photo: Hannu Aaltonen/Finnish National Gallery/Ateneum Art Museum/Hallonblad Collection

Helene Schjerfbeck painted “Self-Portrait, Black Background” in 1919. Her career spanned a critical period in Finland’s development as a nation. (For an uncropped version of this picture, see the slideshow below.)

Scandinavia House in New York is the starting point for a show of four Finnish painters, all of them women, whose careers coincided with cultural and political transformations. The paintings later continue to Stockholm before returning to Helsinki as part of a larger exhibition.

On a weekday afternoon in New York City, several American women are touring Independent Visions: Helene Schjerfbeck and Her Contemporaries, an exhibition of 55 artworks by four Finnish painters at Scandinavia House on Park Avenue. “Very nice,” says one of the patrons, “but a little depressing.” The pieces come from the collection of Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum, and some of them do reflect a kind of melancholia that attended the cultural and political transformations as Finland moved, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, toward creating a national identity and achieving independence.

Read the full story on ThisisFINLAND(Link to another website.) (Opens New Window)