Helene Schjerfbeck
Artist / Painter
Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is a Finnish national icon.
Talented and widely travelled, Schjerfbeck found artistic success at a young age. In the 1880s she connected with artists’ colonies in Pont Aven, Brittany and St. Ives, Cornwall.
Schjerfbeck lived through some of the most seismic shifts in modern art, from Impressionism to Surrealism. But she was never one to follow the crowd and forged her own path. She drew inspiration everywhere from Old Master paintings to contemporary fashion magazines – and in the process she developed her own distinctive, expressive style. Her work defies categorization and she is often seen as a “painter’s painter” – someone who constantly experimented with techniques, and was willing to push and take risks rather than repeat past successes.
In her later years, she left the Finnish capital for a quieter life that allowed her to concentrate on her work. Nonetheless, keeping in touch with artist friends and the seismic shifts in modern art, she produced some of her most raw and radically abstracted paintings in these years.
Helene Schjerfbeck
Artist / Painter
Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is a Finnish national icon.
Talented and widely travelled, Schjerfbeck found artistic success at a young age. In the 1880s she connected with artists’ colonies in Pont Aven, Brittany and St. Ives, Cornwall.
Schjerfbeck lived through some of the most seismic shifts in modern art, from Impressionism to Surrealism. But she was never one to follow the crowd and forged her own path. She drew inspiration everywhere from Old Master paintings to contemporary fashion magazines – and in the process she developed her own distinctive, expressive style. Her work defies categorization and she is often seen as a “painter’s painter” – someone who constantly experimented with techniques, and was willing to push and take risks rather than repeat past successes.
In her later years, she left the Finnish capital for a quieter life that allowed her to concentrate on her work. Nonetheless, keeping in touch with artist friends and the seismic shifts in modern art, she produced some of her most raw and radically abstracted paintings in these years.
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Boros Collection / Bunker Berlin #4May 1, 2022 – OngoingWe have rarely been as aware of the vulnerability of our physical bodies as in recent years. As a society, we are constantly upgrading our bodies through artificial enhancements to immunize ourselves against infections and maximize our performance. (more…)
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Rencontres d’ArlesPhotography FestivalEvery summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city’s exceptional heritage sites, the Rencontres d’Arles has been a major influence in disseminating the best of world photography (more…)
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Eve Arnold. L’opera 1950-1980Feb 25 – Jun 4, 2023CAMERA proposes another legend of 20th-century photography: Eve Arnold, the American photographer who knew how to recount the world with a ‘passionate personal approach’: the only tool she considered indispensable for a photographer. (more…)
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Sung Tieu / Civic FloorApr 4 - Jul 16, 2023With Civic Floor, the MIT List Visual Arts Center will present the US debut of recently co-commissioned works by German-Vietnamese artist Sung Tieu. Tieu employs sculpture, drawing, sound, video, and installation to examine a wide range of subjects in which social or political power is articulated through sensory and psychological realms. (more…)
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Lu GuangPhotographerLu Guang was born in 1961, in Zhejiang Province, China. He has been passionate about photography since he held a camera for the first time, in 1980 when he was a factory worker in his hometown in Yongkang County. (more…)
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Paul Chan: BreathersNov 17, 2022 – Jul 16, 2023Paul Chan: Breathers is the first major US-based museum exhibition of works by artist, writer, and publisher Paul Chan in 15 years. Chan, who was recently awarded the prestigious 2022 MacArthur Fellowship, came to prominence in the early 2000s (more…)
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Impressions of a Lived TimeDec 8, 2022 – Apr 16, 2023The exhibition is part of a comprehensive research on lesser-known painting and graphic works in Ștefan Câlția’s creative process. (more…)
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Edition Block 1966–2022Feb 10, 2023 – Feb 25, 2024Since the 1960s, René Block has been a key figure in the European art world. In 1964, he opened a gallery in Berlin that was to shape art history. In 2022, now aged 80, he is artistic director of the 2022 Riga Biennale taking place from mid-July to early October. (more…)
