HELSINKI.- Magnus Enckell is one of the key artists of the golden age of Finnish art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and yet only some of his work is known. The Ateneum exhibition offers a diverse overview of Enckell’s entire oeuvre from five different decades.

The exhibition and the book to be published in conjunction with it shed light on the artist’s many facets. Enckell, on the one hand, promoted radical reforms in art, but, on the other, relied on the traditions of culture and education. He was a dreamer, but also an international man of the world, a curator of exhibitions, the chairman of the Artists’ Association of Finland, and a creator of monumental works. Music, theatre, and literature were all important to this diversely educated artist.

The exhibition presents many previously unknown works, sketchbooks, pieces from Enckell’s extensive body of drawings, and photographs from his own archive. The exhibition presents Enckell’s work, from the early pieces he created when studying at a drawing school to the mythological works of the 1920s.

The exhibition curators are the director of the Ateneum, Marja Sakari; the director of collections management at the Finnish National Gallery, Riitta Ojanperä; and the chief curator of exhibitions at the Ateneum, Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff.




An introverted pioneer
Enckell’s art fascinated and terrified his contemporaries. His completely black-toned paintings of boys radically reformed painting. He later opted for the other extreme, and became an advocate of all the colours of the rainbow in his art. Enckell was also an influential figure in many areas in the world of art: he founded Finland’s first independent group of artists, Septem, to represent a new art movement. Enckell also took Finnish art to international arenas in Paris.

A myth-savvy reformer
Myths and ancient stories intrigued Enckell throughout his career. Mythology was familiar to Enckell from his youth on, as his father, a head priest, worked as a university docent in the Greek language. Narcissus, Adam and Eve, and erotic bacchantes and fauns appear in his works, reinterpreted in a variety of ways. Enckell’s trips to France, Italy, and Spain inspired him to delve deep into the treasures of European culture, from ecclesiastical art to masters of the Renaissance.

A capturer of private moments
Magnus Enckell was a skilled portraitist who captured his subjects’ states of mind in his paintings. The paintings convey the artist’s immersion in the inner worlds of his subjects. By painting nudes, Enckell portrayed the big questions of human existence, emotions, and encounters between people. Enckell’s intense erotic gaze was directed at athletic young male models, as well as fantasy characters such as fauns and bacchantes.

An admirer of the sea and landscapes
In the summer, Enckell enjoyed the seaside and went on sailing trips. He worked together with his artist friends on the island of Gogland (Suursaari in Finnish). Enckell’s family used to gather at a villa on the island of Kuorsalo off the town of Hamina. In the early 20th century, people believed in the healing effect of sunlight and the outdoors, which is shown in the moods of Enckell’s shimmering beach landscapes. Harbours and ships, as well as the related work and activities, also recur in the artist’s paintings. Many of his harbour subjects were found in Helsinki.

A devotee of quiet subjects
Enckell was a dreamer who relished the home as an aesthetic space. The lonely characters looking out of the window, appearing in many of his paintings, embody longing and dreaminess. Enckell’s many late paintings, exuding the warmth of the home, in turn, emphasise intimacy and privacy. The enigmatic and melancholy mood, characteristic of the artist, is emphasised in a few works depicting moonlit park landscapes.