Pekka Halonen
The Call of Finland

Halonen turned his back on urban modernity, instead capturing in his paintings the unspoilt nature and simple country life suffused with sparklingly clear Scandinavian light. In his many landscapes, he depicts nature as possessing transformative powers – as well as great beauty and monumentality. The works reflect the changing seasons, however, his very many atmospheric wintry pictures earned him the epithet the ‘Snow Painter’.

With this exhibition, Museum Ordrupgaard highlights one of Finland’s most acclaimed artists. Pekka Halonen was a leading figure in the artists’ colony in Tuusula and, through his pictures, expressed a unique Finnish identity. Moreover, he was strongly linked to contemporary international art. Halonen was educated in Helsinki and while completing his studies in Paris in the 1890s, he spent a short time with the French painter Paul Gauguin. The exhibition features some of the artist’s most famous works, representing a new Nordic symbolism emerging around the turn of the century. 

The exhibition has been initiated by Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris, Musées and Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, and organized in collaboration with Museum Ordrupgaard and Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

The exhibition is realized with support from:

Augustinus Fonden / Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond

Curated by Rikke Zinck Jensen, curator, Museum Ordrupgaard, Babette Camelia Honoré, curator, Museum Ordrupgaard, and Dr. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Director, Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery. Adapted from the original concept by Annick Lemoine, Director and Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, Chief Curator, Petit Palais Museum, and Dr. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Director, Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery.