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Retrospective of a radical reformist
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.
