A brief word about Helene Schjerfbeck. Beloved in Nordic countries for her highly original style, Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is relatively unknown to the rest of the world. Overcoming immense personal struggles and working in a remote location for decades, she produced a powerful body of work through sheer force of will. This exhibition affirms her rightful place in the story of modern art.
Here are some portraits by her. A couple of you thought the two other portraits she painted, one of two women, and an abandoned self portrait, which I posted two days ago, had a sense of being sad. I am thinking that perhaps these portraits bight be less dark. This first portrait is interesting because she was trying for something different. After all the paint was applied to the canvas, then she started scraping some of the paint off to get a different effect. You can see on the left where some of the paint has been scraped away. She thought that this was the most tender of her paintings.
This appealing early self portrait was painted in 1895. By 1912 she began to manipulate color, shadowing and self-espression in ways that shared very little of her inner self. A near masklike visage ensued.
This portrait from 1912 is prominently signed and dated. This representation declares an image of increasing self-possession. This was the first self-portrait that she exhibited publicly.
This "Self-Portrait with Silver Background" is less a study of self than an investigation of drawing materials in combination with silver leaf. As with so many of Schjerfbeck's self-portraits, she provides few clues to her inner self. I found that the dozen or so self-portraits were some of the most interesting paintings in the exhibit.
2 comments:
The self portrait from 1895 shows a beautiful young woman. It is interesting how she changed her style through the years.
Today's blog post reminded of sitting in college Art History classes. Part of the exercise was to recognize a work of art by the painter's style ranging from portrait painters like Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Picasso and many others. Helene Schjerfbeck's style evolved over time as shown by your photos. Thanks for the memories and introducing me to a painter I was not familiar with.
PS: I think I was told during a high school English class that sentences should not end with a preposition. I just Googled this and learned that in "modern day usage" it is acceptable to end a sentence with words like "with". I guess my age is showing thru that I would have remembered that; and how lucky it was that was a day I decided not to cut class!
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