Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, seeing painting and sculpture as "branches of the tree whose trunk is architecture." Aalto's early career ran in parallel with the rapid economic growth and industrialization of Finland during the first half of the 20th century. Many of his clients were industrialists, among them the Ahlström-Gullichsen family, who became his patrons. The span of his career, from the 1920s to the 1970s, is reflected in the styles of his work, ranging from Nordic Classicism of the early work, to a rational International Style Modernism during the 1930s to a more organic modernist style from the 1940s onwards.
Helsinki is the capital and most populous city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About 682,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.26 million in the capital region and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area. As the most populous urban area in Finland, it is the country's most significant centre for politics, education, finance, culture, and research. Helsinki is 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 360 kilometres (220 mi) north of Riga, Latvia, 400 kilometres (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Helsinki has significant historical connections with these four cities.
Tove Marika Jansson was a Finnish author, novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author of Swedish descent. Brought up by artistic parents, Jansson studied art from 1930 to 1938 in Helsinki, Stockholm, and Paris. She held her first solo art exhibition in 1943. Over the same period, she penned short stories and articles for publication, and subsequently drew illustrations for book covers, advertisements, and postcards. She continued her work as an artist and writer for the rest of her life.
Finland attracted over 6.8 million foreign tourists in 2018, with 53 percent coming from other European Union states. In 2017, the value added by tourism was about 4.6 billion euros, or 2.6% of the Finnish GDP, providing approximately 140,200 jobs.
Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Finnish: Aalto-yliopiston taiteiden ja suunnittelun korkeakoulu; Swedish: Aalto-universitetets högskola för konst, design och arkitektur), was formed of two separate schools: the faculty of architecture and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. TaiK, founded in 1871, was the largest art university in the Nordic countries. The university awards the following academic degrees: Bachelor of Science in Technology, Architect, Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Arts.
Erik Gunnar Asplund was a Swedish architect, mostly known as a key representative of Nordic Classicism of the 1920s, and during the last decade of his life as a major proponent of the modernist style which made its breakthrough in Sweden at the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930). Asplund was professor of architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1931. His appointment was marked by a lecture, later published under the title "Our architectonic concept of space." The Woodland Crematorium at Stockholm South Cemetery (1935-1940) is considered his finest work and one of the masterpieces of modern architecture.
The Finlandia Hall is a congress and event venue in the centre of Helsinki on the Töölönlahti Bay, owned by the City of Helsinki. The building, which was designed by architect Alvar Aalto, was completed in 1971. Every detail in the building is designed by Aalto. The designs were completed in 1962, with building taking place between 1967 and 1971. The Congress Wing was designed in 1970 and built in 1973–1975. In 2011, the building was expanded with new exhibition and meeting facilities. Finlandia Hall is known as the venue for the OSCE Summit held in August 1975, attended by 35 world leaders, including the leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, and the President of the United States, Gerald Ford.
Aino Maria Marsio-Aalto was a Finnish architect and a pioneer of Scandinavian design. She is known as the design partner of architect Alvar Aalto, with whom she worked for 25 years, and as a co-founder with him, Maire Gullichsen, and Nils-Gustav Hahl of the design company Artek, collaborating on many its most well-known designs. As Artek's first artistic director, her creative output spanned textiles, lamps, glassware, and buildings. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, and MoMA has included her work in nine exhibitions, the first of which was Aalto: Architecture and Furniture in 1938. Other major exhibitions were at the Barbican Art Gallery in London and Chelsea Space in London. Aino Aalto has been exhibited with Pablo Picasso.
Frans Reima Ilmari Pietilä was a Finnish architect and theorist. He did most of his work together with his wife Raili Pietilä ; after 1963 all their works were officially attributed to "Raili and Reima Pietilä". Reima Pietilä was a professor of architecture at the University of Oulu from 1973 to 1979.
Eila Vilhelmina Hiltunen was a Finnish sculptor. She is most famous for the Sibelius Monument (1967). A statue by Hiltunen resembling a smaller version of the Sibelius Monument stands on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
Ida Helmi Tuulikki Pietilä was an American-born Finnish graphic artist and professor. Pietilä is considered one of Finland's most influential graphic artists, with her work being shown in multiple art exhibitions. She worked as a teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, and later trained graphic artists and wrote multiple books about graphic arts.
The Sibelius Monument by Eila Hiltunen is dedicated to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). The monument is located in Sibelius Park in the Töölö district of Helsinki, Finland.
Aalto University is a public research university located in Espoo, Finland. It was established in 2010 as a merger of three major Finnish universities: the Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. The close collaboration between the scientific, business and arts communities is intended to foster multi-disciplinary education and research.
Vivica Sophia Jansson is the daughter of cartoonist Lars Jansson and the niece of the famous Finnish writer and painter Tove Jansson. Jansson has worked as a Spanish language teacher, creative/artistic director, chairman, and majority shareholder of Oy Moomin Characters, Ltd, and provided direct oversight together with her father for the 1990 Moomin animated series.
Glenda Dawn Goss is an American author and music historian whose special interests are music and culture, early modernism, critical editing, and European-American points of cultural contact. Her most notable work has revolved around the life and works of the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius.
The Alvar Aalto Museum is a Finnish museum operating in two cities, Jyväskylä and Helsinki, in two locations each, dedicated to architect and designer Alvar Aalto. All four locations are open to the public. They are:
Åke Fredrik Hellman was a Swedish-speaking Finnish still life and portrait artist and art professor. He worked as art teacher at the University of Helsinki. In 1963, he received the order of the Lion of Finland.
Ester Emmy Maria Helenius was a Finnish artist known for the vibrant use of color in her paintings. This vibrancy was so notable that art historian Tutta Palin described her as a "worshipper of ecstasy." While mainly a painter, Helenius was also trained in printmaking.
Suohpanterror is a Finland-based Sámi art and activist group. It includes a group of anonymous artists from Finland, Norway, and Sweden, producing memes and other visual arts distributed largely via social media, posters, and performance art. Suohpanterror describes its work as "artivism" with a focus on resisting "colonization and environmental injustice in Sápmi."
