UNTO PUSA – Cubism and national illustration – Maire Gullichsen and modernism
Unto Pusa painted his first cubist work entitled Katunäkymä (Street View) in 1949. The painting is also known as Cubist Chevreuse. Pusa had worked in the small town near Paris for a decade and a half, painting canvases in the style of Cézanne, as miniature worlds free of any illusion. For Pusa, Cézanne´s art was not just about the stylistic simplification of form. At its core was an effort to understand the thinking that went into the composition of a painting. In the late 1940s, Pusa visited Fernand Léger’s retrospective in Paris. It made an enduring impression on him. He came to understand that all forms within a composition are equal such that the choice of subject matter no longer occupies a dominant position.