Albert Edelfelt's summer dominates as Retretti Art Centre offers something for everyone

By Kaisa Heinänen in Punkaharju
     
      The steps down into the underground caverns at the Retretti Art Centre lead one on a journey of the imagination.
      Kim Simonsson's (b. 1974) dramatically-lit ceramic figures of children and animals begin to live their own lives in the semi-darkness of the caves excavated in the 1980s, and are more than a little ghostly. The bare pale, shiny or metallic surfaces are in stark contrast to the rough-hewn stone walls and the drip of water underground.
     
The caverns at Retretti are possibly Finland's most unusual venue for an art exhibition, and Simonsson's "Golden Deer" show of ceramic sculptures fits the place like a glove.
      Even though many of the works by the young Finnish sculptor have been seen before in Helsinki, here they manage to look quite different from the no-nonsense milieu of the Galleria Heino and the artist's April exhibiition in the capital.
     
Up on the surface, this year's main exhibition at Retretti, which is located handily close to the summer opera mecca of Savonlinna, offers a very different experience.
      The hero of the hour is Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), one of Finland's best-loved painters.
      The curator, art historian Maria Vainio-Kurtakko, has put together Albert Edelfelt and the Nordic Summer, setting a collection of the artist's summer works alongside those of Nordic contemporaries.
      Around 100 paintings are on show, of which some 70 are by Edelfelt himself.
     
Although Edelfelt has been much studied, his relationship with his Scandinavian contemporaries is less well documented.
      The "shock of the new" at the end of the 19th century, with the advent of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, coupled with moves toward a more secular way of life and to greater demands for democracy, were also reflected naturally enough in the Nordic art of the day.
      Vainio-Kurtakko has examined how the idyll and the changing reality came together.
      For his part, Edelfelt rejected his earlier large historical designs and moved increasingly towards landscapes and the outdoors.
     
The well-to-do bourgeoisie of the time wanted to get out of the congested cities in the summer and back to the bosom of nature.
      "The term 'Sommarnöjet' contains the whole gamut of things relating to the summer and to rural villa life. The gentry would decamp to their summer residences for as much as three or four months."
      Edelfelt did likewise, moving with his family to spend the summer at Villa Edelfelt in Haikko, near Porvoo.
      There the artist painted his family and friends under sunny skies and in relaxed, carefree mood.
     
Vainio-Kurtakko sees behind the idyllic facade in Edelfelt's summer works.
      "The pictures may look to be conveying the summer idyll, but they are not necessarily the real thing", she says.
      "This one in particular was a wake-up call", says the curator in front of Kesä ("Summer") from 1883.
      The work depicts a young woman sitting in long grass and looking at two younger children apparently picking meadow flowers in the middle distance, with a house slightly further off.
      "Seventeen-year-old Annie Edelfelt is presented as any girl of her age."
      It all looks simple enough, and yet the way in which light and shade are painted reveals that something more is going on here - the growth of a girl into womanhood.
      "The young girl is stepping into adult life. This is her future", says Vainio-Kurtakko, referring to the house in the background and to the increasing responsibilities and demands to be placed on the subject.
     
For Edelfelt's Danish contemporaries, the equivalent of Haikko was Skagen on the northernmost point of the Jutland Peninsula.
      According to Vainio-Kurtakko, the painters of the "Skagen Colony" saw more poverty and drudgery in the landscape they recorded than Edelfelt was ever exposed to. The eastern parts of Finland's Uusimaa in the late 19th century were a relatively prosperous region.
      Hence while Edelfelt seldom turned his attention to people at work, Michael Peter Ancher (1849-1927) painted dramatic portraits of fishermen in Skagen, where the currents were strong and perilous, and where death by drowning was not uncommon.
      Paintings on display by the Norwegian Christian Krohg (1852-1925), who was a frequent Skagen visitor, show for instance a fisherman in a sou'wester struggling in a strong swell, or the lined face and calloused hands of a woman cutting a loaf of bread.
      "Edelfelt's subjects were not painted going about their work. For instance even the girl he depicts carrying a rake is seen coming back from the fields after her day's labour."
      The pictures on display have been loaned to Retretti from private collections and Nordic museums, including Norway's Nationalmuseet and the Bergen Art Museum.
     
Aside from Simonsson and Edelfelt, there is quite a lot to see at Retretti this year, with the accent on something for everyone.
      Finnish children will for instance enjoy a separate exhibition on Ransu and the other glove puppet characters featured on Pikku Kakkonen a popular and very long-running TV programme for the youngest viewers.
      Siim-Tanel Annus (b. 1960) has arrived from Estonia with an interesting show called Money and Poetry, featuring reliefs that draw on figures used in banknotes and on the signatures attached to momentous political agreements, not least those that sealed the fate of the Estonian people in the mid-20th century.
      Among the faces included are a couple of Finnish icons - Jean Sibelius, who used to grace the 100- markka note until it was withdrawn with the advent of the euro, and the architect Alvar Aalto, who was on the 50-markka note.
     
     
Albert Edelfelt and the Nordic Summer, Siim-Tanel Annus, Kim Simonsson - Retretti Art Centre until 30.8.2009. See link for details of opening times.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.6.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Albert Edelfelt´s mysterious Virginie is an enduring myth in Finnish art history (11.5.2004)

See also:
  Record number of visitors see Albert Edelfelt 150th Anniversary Exhibition in Helsinki (31.1.2005)

Links:
  Kim Simonsson
  Siim-Tanel Annus: Money and Poetry
  Albert Edelfelt at the Finnish National Gallery
  Retretti Art Centre
  Albert Edelfelt (Wikipedia)
  Savonlinna Opera Festival
  Punkaharju (Wikipedia)