80 ARTISTS: DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN ART FROM THE COLLECTION OF MAIRE GULLICHSEN ART FOUNDATION
PRESS RELEASE
The current exhibition at the Pori Art Museum showcases a segment of Maire Gullichsen’s art collection, reflecting both its international influences and the significance of Gullichsen’s life work in advancing Finnish art.
Maire Gullichsen’s interests have been predominantly centered on modern French art. France has always served as a fertile ground for the growth of Finnish art. In the late 19th century, when Finland lacked a comprehensive art education system, Finnish artists acquired the technical skills in Paris that later fueled the country’s Golden Age of art. In the 1910s, a new coloristic movement in Finnish art drew inspiration from French Post-Impressionism. It was at this point that our visual arts distinctly divided into this internationally oriented color-based art and a heavier, more nationalistic expressionism. With Finland’s newfound independence, national values were heavily favored, but this also brought a certain monotony and rigidity, leading to a loss of creative freedom and joy.
When Maire Gullichsen began her active involvement in the art world during the 1930s, she sought to establish a lasting influence — first as a student at the Free Art School, then as a co-founder of Artek and the Nykytaide association. This effort was driven by the desire to liberate artistic creation. The students of the Free Art School demanded more color, color, and still more color, drawing their inspiration from the warm climates of the South, particularly France and Italy. Artek and Alvar Aalto’s modernism was rooted in international functionalism, and the first international exhibitions at Galerie Artek featured artists like Fernand Léger and Alexander Calder.
Just before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Artek organized a major exhibition of modern French art at Helsinki’s Kunsthalle, showcasing modern French masters like Bonnard, Picasso, Braque, and Matisse. This exhibition also sparked the idea of founding Nykytaide, an association aimed at establishing strong ties between Finnish and international art developments.
“The art I advocate for is clear, an expression of intellect and harmony,” proclaimed Denise René, a champion of French concrete art. René’s gallery is one of the many with which Maire Gullichsen collaborated over the years. The clarity and harmony of modernism are also the dominant characteristics of Gullichsen’s collection. From Fernand Léger, there is a clear line extending through the artists of the Klar Form exhibition of 1951 — Arp, Pillet, Léger, Calder, Magnelli, Vasarely, Deyrolle, Mortensen, and Baertling — to the Finnish concrete art movement, which Maire Gullichsen staunchly supported for decades. Despite the rise of Abstract Expressionism and more intense realist movements, concrete art has tenaciously maintained its foothold in Finnish art, so much so that it is today one of the strongest and nearly the sole surviving branches of contemporary Finnish abstract art. This trend is also evident in both the international and Finnish works presented in this collection.
In a country with limited collections of international art, Maire Gullichsen’s collection stands out as a valuable and unique ensemble. Through rare and high-quality examples, it highlights a key aspect of international modernism and its influence on Finnish art.
Beyond the cubist lineage — represented most notably by Juan Gris’ striking still life and works by Léger, Braque, and Vasarely — Gullichsen’s keen eye has also focused on numerous unique pieces by artists who are now regarded as undisputed classics of modern art: Max Ernst, Kandinsky, Paul Gauguin, Raoul Dufy, Jean Arp, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Georges Rouault, Wols, and others.
For Maire Gullichsen, art was not primarily an object of collection but an inseparable part of her rich life. This is evident in the exhibition’s accompanying tapestries, ceramics, books, chess sets… She practically realized the vision cherished by art reformers of the previous century: that there should be no division between high art and lesser art forms, but rather that ART IS ONE.
(From the exhibition catalog Kotimaista ja ulkomaista taidetta Maire Gullichsenin kokoelmista, essay titled “Art is One” by Salme Sarajas-Korte, published by the Pori Art Museum)
Translated with ChatGPT