Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), A Passion for Finland

The Musée d'Orsay, together with the Helsinki Art Museum and the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, organizes the exhibition Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), A Passion for Finland.

Gallen-Kallela is recognized one of the most emblematic of the talented Finnish artists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The artist had close links with Paris where he had studied at the Académie Julian and at Fernand Cormon's studio, before going on to triumph at the 1900 Universal Exhibition with his monumental, synthetist frescoes that decorated the interior of the Finnish Pavilion.

He exhibited his work again in Paris in 1909, before setting off for Africa from where he brought back a flamboyant series of paintings and watercolours. He also stayed in Berlin in 1895, along with Edvard Munch, where the two artists were regarded as heralds of a New Art.

This brilliant career, interweaving Realism, Neo-Romanticism and Symbolism as well as the decorative arts, was marked by a tendency to reject or adopt spiritual ideals. Thus he rejected the images of street life and cabarets from his first stay in Paris when he embraced Naturalism, seeing it merely as an expression of decadence.

Date: until May 6.
Location: Musée d’Orsay. 62, rue de Lille. 75343 Paris Cedex 07, France.
Opening hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9.30am to 6pm. Thursdays from 9.30am to 9.45 pm

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