DRAWINGS AND PRINTMAKING – LAURI SANTTU

PRESS RELEASE

Lauri Santtu (b. 1902) presents fifty perceptive portraits from his long career, from childhood drawings to recent years.

The exhibition includes several of Santtu’s apt characterisations of Finnish folk characters. Interesting examples include works from the 1920s, from his apprenticeship at the Nurmo steam sawmill, or from his time as a woodcutter in the same region. For Santtu himself, it was the inspirations of the workmen of those times, ‘look closely, it looks like it should’ or ‘hard to believe it is just as it should’, that gave most credence to his dreams of a career as an artist. The exhibition also includes a number of skillful caricatures of Finnish personalities and artists, which are significant in terms of cultural history.

Professor Lauri Santtu is a draughtsman, graphic artist and phonetic artist. He has studied fine art under Carl Bengts and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, at the Finnish Art Association’s School of Drawing and Art, at the University of Helsinki’s Drawing School and at the Copenhagen Academy of Fine Arts. His works were first exhibited in Vyborg in 1927.

Translated with DeepL