Ellen Thesleff

A Finnish artist and graphic artist, a bright representative of Symbolism and one of the first expressionists in the country.

Ellen was born into a family of a major official. Her first teacher was her father, and he shared his knowledge with his six children. Considering the talent of his daughter, he supported her studies in private official schools of painting. An endless source of inspiration for the artist was Italy and the works of such outstanding masters as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Italy was the spiritual home of the artist. Here she spent most of her time regularly visiting the country for 45 years. Ellen Tesleff said that only in Italy she was able to understand the true nature of light, how it lays down on objects, how it animates everything around. In Tuscany and Florence, most of her landscapes were created they later became more expressionistic.

Ellen Tesleff was an innovative artist. During her long career, she tried a variety of artistic methods and styles, but always remained true to her own romantic and emotional manner. The great merit of the artist is to popularize European art in Finland. Together with his companion and friend Magnus Enckell, she became the founder of the art group “Septem”, which contributed to the development of avant-garde painting in Scandinavia.

Key ideas:

– Ellen Thesleff paid most attention to the color and expressive power in her works. At the beginning of her career, the color of her work was quite ascetic and even monochrome. Portraits, covered with a soft haze, evoke associations with the paintings by Eugene Carriere by their mystery and lyricism.

– After the artist traveled to Italy and got to know modern art, her style underwent great changes. The colors of her paintings became more saturated, and the characters were emotionally expressive.

– Paintings by Thesleff are mostly portraits and landscapes. In the second half of her creative path, the artist increasingly turned to graphics, repeating the themes of her paintings in lithographs.

– Her pictures do not have plots, they rather reflect feelings, create images and convey mood, than display real events. Over time, the artist developed her own individual style – poetic and fantastic, directed into the depths of the human inner world. The artist’s style was much closer to the art of Europe than the painting of her Finnish colleagues and contemporaries.