PRINTMAKING 1978-1980 – VEIKKO VIONOJA

PRESS RELEASE

The traditional old house in Central Ostrobothnia is an impressive two-story log building set amid the plains. Its courtyard includes a granary, woodshed, sauna, barn, and stable. The interior features chairs, tables, and cabinets that are masterpieces of simple taste. The muted tones of these furnishings are echoed in the old Ostrobothnian rugs. The people moving about this homestead are quietly going about their daily tasks — steady peasants, often devout followers of the Finnish revivalist movement.

It’s no surprise that Veikko Vionoja has drawn from this rich environment as the foundation for his life’s work. This is, after all, the landscape of his childhood, filled in the artist’s mind with unbroken silence and inner peace. “One can only depict what one’s heart is wholly devoted to,” he says. As an artist, he excludes the changing, contradictory world of today and returns to the past. His works, therefore, hold a unique cultural and historical significance.

Vionoja is best known as a painter, using subdued, dark hues that harmonize beautifully. However, since the early 1940s, his paintings have been complemented by drawings. For these, he uses pencil, ink, or especially charcoal, which creates deep black areas with rich and lush strokes. Sometimes his drawings are heavy and solemn; other times, they are filled with poetry and light. But they are always characterized by a rich variation of shades, often giving them a painterly quality. Only from a genuine experience can such vivid and sensitive strokes emerge.

In recent years, Vionoja has expanded his expression into the field of printmaking. This has resulted in a series of relatively large black-and-white or colored lithographs. The subjects remain scenes of clustered buildings, window views, and solitary human figures integrated into them. In these works, the expression is liberated and confident. The overall tone is either steady and solemn or delicately atmospheric, much like in his drawings. The artist’s vision is always humane and warm.

The buildings in the Ostrobothnian courtyards form structural entities with the same strength and uncompromising nature as the character of the local people. The silence of the yard is emphasized in the window compositions. The atmosphere of stillness in these compositions varies, depending entirely on the light. It is the light that creates that peculiar, motionless silence that is such an essential element in Vionoja’s art. In this setting, his rural people blend seamlessly. The artist often sees them from behind, as broad, simple figures. Or they sit in solemn rows, nearly identical in appearance, attentively listening to a revivalist pastor’s sermon. These are not individuals but rather types. They are the people of Ostrobothnia.

Now at the age of 71, Veikko Vionoja often spends summers in Ostrobothnia, while winters are spent in the heart of the capital. There, from his brush or pencil emerges one village or courtyard scene after another, yet each work signifies a deep immersion into the landscapes of his childhood. “Nature should not appear as it does in everyday life—it must be lived,” he says. He frees what he sees from its conventional realistic form and creates a landscape of the soul, where inner beauty prevails.

(From the publication “Vionoja,” written by Leena Peltola)

Translated with ChatGPT