Akseli Gallen-Kallela Prints

About Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Akseli Gallen-Kallela was born Axel Gallén in 1865 in Pori, on Finland's west coast, into a Swedish-speaking family. He studied at the Finnish Art Society's drawing school in Helsinki and from 1884 to 1889 at the Académie Julian and the Atelier Cormon in Paris, where the plein-air naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage shaped early works such as Old Woman with a Cat of 1885. After marrying Mary Slöör in 1890 he travelled to East Karelia to gather material for pictures of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, a journey later seen as the start of Karelianism. In 1894 to 1895 he showed in Berlin alongside Edvard Munch, and built his studio home, Kalela, on Lake Ruovesi. The death of his daughter in 1895 hardened his style, and between 1896 and 1899 he painted The Defense of the Sampo, Lemminkäinen's Mother and Kullervo's Curse. His frescoes for the Finnish Pavilion at the Paris World Fair of 1900 made him the country's leading artist; around 1904 to 1906 he painted Lake Keitele four times. He finnicised his name in 1907, lived in Kenya from 1909 to 1911, designed flags and decorations for independent Finland in 1918 and worked in New Mexico in the mid-1920s. He died of pneumonia in Stockholm in 1931. His mature paintings flatten landscape and myth into clear outlines and bands of colour, close to stained glass and textiles, which is why they read so strongly at a distance.