Eila Aine was a discreet, unassuming, well-travelled mother of four who, for a day job, would look into other silent people’s wide open mouths.
She read avidly, was a person awake to the current affairs of her own time and place, and bore a caring voice for other fellow women of her generation, whose song was, due to the ebb and flow of the times, not being properly heard.
Further, Eila and her husband Veli Aine, a successful businessman in the area of motoring, shared a common passion for the visual arts; they collected extensively and enjoyed their acquisitions at their Tornio house. This mutual interest for art became a seed.
Over time, when their house got packed to the rafters with artworks, this seed reaped its fruit. Since, we have the Aine Art Museum in Tornio.
Aine Art Museum Director Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introducing Aine exhibition
Aine Art Museum has opened its doors for ‘Eila’, an exhibition celebrating 100 years of Eila Aine’s birth, with a thoughtful selection of artworks from the museum’s collections. At the opening, as the occasion called for, there were speeches. Eila’s granddaughter, Outi Aine, shared first-hand, insightful accounts about her grandmother’s multifaceted personality, her example as a woman dedicated to both, her family and her profession, her personal interests and her gifts. Museum director Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introduced the outlines of the exhibition, shed light on the themes behind each of the four rooms comprising the show and, pausing every now and then to talk aboutparticular works, directed the audience's attention in the room like a well-versed orquestra conductor.
The first room, where the speeches were held, was themed ‘Kevyesti keskellä päivää‘ (Lightly in the Middle of the Day) honouring the homonymous radio program, Eila would surely have listened to in the midst of the bustle of her family life and dentist practice.
On its walls hanged, inter alia, ‘Death of a Clown’ by Väinö Kunnas. I was thrilled to bits to encounter again this painting at the museum. It’s a favourite piece of mine, amongst other things, because it epitomises many qualities I aspire to achieve in my own painting practice. A committee of characters, of whom you can't be sure whether they are for real or pretence, hold the feeble body of one of their own. The limbs of the central figure are flaccid, lifeless, while the rest of the party seem to grief its fall. However, because of their attire, the colours and the way the painting is executed, the sorrow cannot -and should not- be taken completely seriously. Is this a real death or a make-believe? The question remains. At the end of the day, are we all not but clowns in the melodrama of bank bills, frozen pizzas, and random social media posts we call 'my life'?
‘Death of a Clown’ by Väinö Kunnas, 1924
Aine Art Museum is an institution well know for a dynamic program of acquisitions, which supports emerging, mid-career and established artists alike. Some of the museum’s recent purchases can be seen in this exhibition for the first time. The second room of the show 'Hair, Hats, Scarves and Pearls' winks at Eila´s femininity (distinct from her feminist side). There is a wall integrated by the works of five female artists -Mia Hamari, Elina Brotherus, Kaija Kuru, Raisa Raekallio and Sanna Haimila- on women's breasts.
In her work, Brotherus invites us to peek into an intimate scene of contemporary vanitias: instead of a man looking at his skull, here two women are bonding, while looking with curiosity at the life of their own bosoms, transfigured into fragrant, colourful pieces of fruit. Kaija Kiuru offers two boobs out of reach, made of tender birch bark and steel uphosterly nails, working as embellishments, as much as protection devices. Raisa Raekallio, comments on the quest of the ageing woman (perchance her own), through a captivatingly personal, intuitive use of drawing and the lens of her characteristic sense of humor. Haimila's works reflect a longing for motherhood in its purest, most visceral, biological state, devoided of all the mental gauging for pros and cons.
Elina Brotherus 'Orange Event, Part 3' 2017
I was baffled by a small portrait by Irja Huuskonen in the same room, which was painted almost 80 years back and it looked fresh off some cutting-edge, flashy art-space in the Big Apple, made by a up-and-coming jazzy artist, with many k’s of insta followers. The painting combines a formidable dose of present-day painting meta-linguistics, with a heartfelt, almost naive, sense of positivity and solemn faith, so characteristic of the modern period, to which it actually belongs.
Eila was, apparently, a wonderful cook. The third room present works related to the kitchen and the rituals of food around the table. First thing that captured my eye, as I made my way into the room, was the yellow glow from a modest-sized painting by Rafael Wardi. Not unlike his predecessors, Bonnard, Vuillard and rest of the gang, Wardi’s work is a plea for the joy of everyday life, and an invitation to a feast for the senses (which isn’t it what food at its best is too?).
Not far, an interplay of works by Tyko Sallinen and Joel Karppanen reveal the tension between the naiveté many of us unwittingly hold about the provenance of the things we eat and its, more often than not, crude reality. It comes to mind Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar speech of the other day. Also in the room, an earlier work by Hanna Kanto ‘Kiss -73’ already marked by her nonconformist, unruly attitude as an artist. As usual, the work conceals the artist’s proficency under an informal, casual appearance, because -I presume- she’s more interested in translating the immediacy of the experience (in this case, the creaminess of a kiss, which is not that dissimilar from the that of a cake) than in letting us all see how dexterous a painter she is.
Tyko Sallinen 'Still Life with Cabbage, Bird and Boy' 1929
Joel Karppanen 'Goose Hunting' 2017
The furthest room, constituted by relatively older works, is established around Eila’s favourites landscapes and natural motifs in the museum collections. Pictures of painted flowers dominate the space. A more punchy, newfangled creation by Hanna Oinonen stands out from a majority of works from the depths of the 20th century. ‘It Happened One Day’ is a wall installation of tiny, black and white vingates of kids and flowers, that urges the viewer to look within, and be accountable for our own fragility.
Not far from it, but somehow belonging to a different domain, two placid drawings by Aimo Kanerva, in which all the elements -the unpretentious strokes, the desultory presence of lines, the areas of frottage, the smudges, the absence of hued shades, the rugosity of the paper- have a truly herbal quality to them. I was seduced, a few steps further, by a beautiful (yes, I said beautiful) painting, delicate in composition and delicate in execution. In the painting prevails a nordic, reserved, enjoyment of colour, that makes the soul gladden and quieten simultaneously. Only when I turned my eyes to the label I found out it was made, almost eighty years ago, by Tove Jansson, the lady behind the cartoons I watch every morning with my berry muesli.
She read avidly, was a person awake to the current affairs of her own time and place, and bore a caring voice for other fellow women of her generation, whose song was, due to the ebb and flow of the times, not being properly heard.
Further, Eila and her husband Veli Aine, a successful businessman in the area of motoring, shared a common passion for the visual arts; they collected extensively and enjoyed their acquisitions at their Tornio house. This mutual interest for art became a seed.
Over time, when their house got packed to the rafters with artworks, this seed reaped its fruit. Since, we have the Aine Art Museum in Tornio.
Aine Art Museum Director Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introducing Aine exhibition
Aine Art Museum has opened its doors for ‘Eila’, an exhibition celebrating 100 years of Eila Aine’s birth, with a thoughtful selection of artworks from the museum’s collections. At the opening, as the occasion called for, there were speeches. Eila’s granddaughter, Outi Aine, shared first-hand, insightful accounts about her grandmother’s multifaceted personality, her example as a woman dedicated to both, her family and her profession, her personal interests and her gifts. Museum director Katriina Pietilä-Juntura introduced the outlines of the exhibition, shed light on the themes behind each of the four rooms comprising the show and, pausing every now and then to talk aboutparticular works, directed the audience's attention in the room like a well-versed orquestra conductor.
The first room, where the speeches were held, was themed ‘Kevyesti keskellä päivää‘ (Lightly in the Middle of the Day) honouring the homonymous radio program, Eila would surely have listened to in the midst of the bustle of her family life and dentist practice.
On its walls hanged, inter alia, ‘Death of a Clown’ by Väinö Kunnas. I was thrilled to bits to encounter again this painting at the museum. It’s a favourite piece of mine, amongst other things, because it epitomises many qualities I aspire to achieve in my own painting practice. A committee of characters, of whom you can't be sure whether they are for real or pretence, hold the feeble body of one of their own. The limbs of the central figure are flaccid, lifeless, while the rest of the party seem to grief its fall. However, because of their attire, the colours and the way the painting is executed, the sorrow cannot -and should not- be taken completely seriously. Is this a real death or a make-believe? The question remains. At the end of the day, are we all not but clowns in the melodrama of bank bills, frozen pizzas, and random social media posts we call 'my life'?
‘Death of a Clown’ by Väinö Kunnas, 1924
Aine Art Museum is an institution well know for a dynamic program of acquisitions, which supports emerging, mid-career and established artists alike. Some of the museum’s recent purchases can be seen in this exhibition for the first time. The second room of the show 'Hair, Hats, Scarves and Pearls' winks at Eila´s femininity (distinct from her feminist side). There is a wall integrated by the works of five female artists -Mia Hamari, Elina Brotherus, Kaija Kuru, Raisa Raekallio and Sanna Haimila- on women's breasts.
In her work, Brotherus invites us to peek into an intimate scene of contemporary vanitias: instead of a man looking at his skull, here two women are bonding, while looking with curiosity at the life of their own bosoms, transfigured into fragrant, colourful pieces of fruit. Kaija Kiuru offers two boobs out of reach, made of tender birch bark and steel uphosterly nails, working as embellishments, as much as protection devices. Raisa Raekallio, comments on the quest of the ageing woman (perchance her own), through a captivatingly personal, intuitive use of drawing and the lens of her characteristic sense of humor. Haimila's works reflect a longing for motherhood in its purest, most visceral, biological state, devoided of all the mental gauging for pros and cons.
Elina Brotherus 'Orange Event, Part 3' 2017
I was baffled by a small portrait by Irja Huuskonen in the same room, which was painted almost 80 years back and it looked fresh off some cutting-edge, flashy art-space in the Big Apple, made by a up-and-coming jazzy artist, with many k’s of insta followers. The painting combines a formidable dose of present-day painting meta-linguistics, with a heartfelt, almost naive, sense of positivity and solemn faith, so characteristic of the modern period, to which it actually belongs.
Eila was, apparently, a wonderful cook. The third room present works related to the kitchen and the rituals of food around the table. First thing that captured my eye, as I made my way into the room, was the yellow glow from a modest-sized painting by Rafael Wardi. Not unlike his predecessors, Bonnard, Vuillard and rest of the gang, Wardi’s work is a plea for the joy of everyday life, and an invitation to a feast for the senses (which isn’t it what food at its best is too?).
Not far, an interplay of works by Tyko Sallinen and Joel Karppanen reveal the tension between the naiveté many of us unwittingly hold about the provenance of the things we eat and its, more often than not, crude reality. It comes to mind Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar speech of the other day. Also in the room, an earlier work by Hanna Kanto ‘Kiss -73’ already marked by her nonconformist, unruly attitude as an artist. As usual, the work conceals the artist’s proficency under an informal, casual appearance, because -I presume- she’s more interested in translating the immediacy of the experience (in this case, the creaminess of a kiss, which is not that dissimilar from the that of a cake) than in letting us all see how dexterous a painter she is.
Tyko Sallinen 'Still Life with Cabbage, Bird and Boy' 1929
Joel Karppanen 'Goose Hunting' 2017
The furthest room, constituted by relatively older works, is established around Eila’s favourites landscapes and natural motifs in the museum collections. Pictures of painted flowers dominate the space. A more punchy, newfangled creation by Hanna Oinonen stands out from a majority of works from the depths of the 20th century. ‘It Happened One Day’ is a wall installation of tiny, black and white vingates of kids and flowers, that urges the viewer to look within, and be accountable for our own fragility.
Not far from it, but somehow belonging to a different domain, two placid drawings by Aimo Kanerva, in which all the elements -the unpretentious strokes, the desultory presence of lines, the areas of frottage, the smudges, the absence of hued shades, the rugosity of the paper- have a truly herbal quality to them. I was seduced, a few steps further, by a beautiful (yes, I said beautiful) painting, delicate in composition and delicate in execution. In the painting prevails a nordic, reserved, enjoyment of colour, that makes the soul gladden and quieten simultaneously. Only when I turned my eyes to the label I found out it was made, almost eighty years ago, by Tove Jansson, the lady behind the cartoons I watch every morning with my berry muesli.