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.
Artek is a Finnish furniture company. It was founded in December 1935 by architect Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino Aalto, visual arts promoter Maire Gullichsen and art historian Nils-Gustav Hahl. The founders chose a non-Finnish name: the neologism Artek was meant to manifest the desire to combine art and technology. This echoed a main idea of the International Style movement, especially the Bauhaus, to emphasize the technical expertise in production and quality of materials, instead of historical-based, eclectic or frivolous ornamentation.
Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish-American photographer who works in the United States.
Erkki Juhani Kurenniemi was a Finnish designer, philosopher and artist, best known for his electronic music compositions and the electronic instruments he has designed. He is considered to have been one of the leading early pioneers of electronic music in Finland. Kurenniemi was also a science populariser, a futurologist, a pioneer of media culture, and an experimental film-maker.
Veikko Huovinen was a Finnish novelist and forester. As a novelist, his writing was known for its realism, pacifism, sharp intellect, and peculiar humor. He wrote 37 books, and one of his best-known humorous novels is The Sheep Eaters from 1970. One of his books, the 1980 novel Dog Nail Clipper was adapted into a critically well-received 2004 film of the same name.
Kari Peter Conrad von Bagh was a Finnish film historian and director. Von Bagh worked as the head of the Finnish Film Archive, editor-in-chief of Filmihullu magazine and co-founder and director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival. From 2001, he was the artistic director of the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Von Bagh was a member of the jury in the competition category of 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Ismo Olavi Hölttö is a Finnish documentary photographer known for his monochrome portraits of Romani people and others living in the cities and countryside of Finland in the 1960s, a time of rapid societal change.
The architecture of Finland has a history spanning over 800 years, and while up until the modern era the architecture was highly influenced by Sweden, there were also influences from Germany and Russia. From the early 19th century onwards influences came directly from further afield: first when itinerant foreign architects took up positions in the country and then when the Finnish architect profession became established.
The Helsinki School was a name introduced in an article by Boris Hohmeyer, Aufbruch im hohen Norden, in Art Das Kunstmagazin in 2003. This was the first time it was used as a brand name to describe a selection of artists who had studied under adjunct professor Timothy Persons at the University of Art & Design in Espoo from the beginning of 1990s. So far, with over a 180 international publications, the Helsinki School represents a collaborative approach, where students of photography, not only work together by presenting each other's works but, exhibit with their professors, mentors and former alumni in a joint effort to share in mutual contextual dialogue that uses the photographic process as a tool for thinking.
Vilho Henrik Lampi was a Finnish painter who is best known for his self-portraits and paintings of Liminka and the people who lived there.
Timo Jussi Penttilä was one of Finland's most important modernist architects and was for over 15 years a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in Austria. He is most renowned for the design of the Helsinki City Theatre (1961–67).
Seppo Erkki Sakari Heikinheimo was a Finnish musicologist, music journalist, writer and translator.
Elina Brotherus is a Finnish photographer and video artist specializing in self-portraits and landscapes. She lives and works in Helsinki, Finland and Avallon, France.
Marjaana Kella is a Finnish photographer.
Ilmari Aalto was a Finnish painter. He was a member of the expressionist November Group led by the artist Tyko Sallinen. Aalto painted still lives, landscapes and portraits.
Yrjö Aulis Uramo Blomstedt was a Finnish architect and professor of architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology. He was a renowned modernist architect and architectural theoretician in the decades following the Second World War. Blomstedt was born into an architect family: his father Yrjö Blomstedt was an architect known for his National Romantic Jugend architecture, while his older brother Pauli E. Blomstedt was, until his premature death at the age of 35, a pioneering early modernist architect. His other brother, Jussi Jalas, was a composer. Blomstedt was married to Heidi Blomstedt, the daughter of the composer Jean Sibelius. They had two children, the artist Juhana Blomstedt and the architect Severi Blomstedt.
Esa Erkki Piironen is a Finnish architect. He studied architecture at Helsinki University of Technology, qualifying as an architect in 1970. He studied architecture and urban design in North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was awarded the Master of Architecture in 1972. He was working as a teaching assistant at Helsinki University of Technology 1972–81, and was awarded Licentiate in Technology in 1978. Visiting professor at Guangdong University of Technology School of Art and Design starting from 2012.
Harri Pälviranta is a visual artist who uses mostly photography but also moving images and archival approach. Pälviranta is also a researcher, who specializes in photography studies and theories of documentary.
Jumalan teatteri was a Finnish avant-garde, radicalist group of student actors from the Helsinki Theatre Academy. The group was composed of Esa Kirkkopelto and Jari Halonen, now directors, and Jorma Tommila and Jari Hietanen, now actors. Jumalan teatteri is best remembered for their experimental act at the Oulu City Theatre in 1987, where the group used fire extinguishers, raw eggs, whips, excrement, and fireworks to drive out all but one member of the audience. Police arrested the performers, and it became an internationally known scandal.
Eeli Alvar Aalto is a Finnish visual artist and television director.
