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Akseli Gallen Kallela

Early days: Akseli Gallen Kallela was a painter born on April 26,1865 in Pori, Finland. He is well known for his illustrations of the Kalevala which is the Finnish national epic. His work was considered very significant for the Finnish national identity. Akseli Gallen Kallela learnt drawing at the Finnish Art Society.

Career:

He got married to Mary Sloor in 1890.Initially when he was in Paris his paintings involved several romantic works based on the Kalevala as well as other landscapes. By 1894,he shifted to Berlin to personally oversee the combined exhibition of his collections with the works of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.In 1895,one of his daughters had expired.After this, his paintings consisted of  extremely violent paintings like "The Defense of the Sampo”, “Joukahainen's Revenge”, and “Lemminkainen's Mother”.

For the Paris World Fair in 1900, Gallen Kallela painted frescoes for the Finnish Pavilion. In these frescoes, his political ideas became most evident. One of the vipers in the fresco “Ilmarinen Plowing the Field of Vipers” is wearing the Romanov crown, and the process of eradicating the vipers from the field was a clear reference to his longing for an independent Finland.

The Paris Exposition secured Gallen Kallela's stature as a prominent Finnish artist. In 1901 he was commissioned to paint the fresco, “Kullervo Goes to War”, for the concert hall of the Helsinki Student's Union.

From 1923 to 1926, he lived in the United States, where an exhibition of his work toured several cities. In 1925, he started the illustrations for his "Great Kalevala". But this remained incomplete as he died of pneumonia in Stockholm on March 7,1931 while returning after a lecture in Copenhagen, Denmark

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