Helene Schjerfbeck

Helene (Helena Sofia) Schjerfbeck (* July 10, 1862 in Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland, † January 23, 1946 in Saltsjöbaden, Sweden) was a Finland-Swedish painter.

Life

Helene Schjerfbeck, daughter of the iron staff Svante Schjerfbeck was, even as a child, a talented painter and drawer. Even as a student she has won several awards; a picture of the then seventeen year old was bought by the Finnish Art Society after an exhibition. In her teenage years Schjerfbeck traveled a lot. In 1880 she was living with a grant from the Finnish Senate to study a few months in Paris, where she won significant suggestions from the art scene. From July 1887 to the spring of the following year into visited Schjerfbeck her friend, the Austro -British artist Marianne Stokes and whose husband Adrian Scott Stokes in St Ives in the English county of Cornwall and returned in the summer of 1889 again for a longer stay to St Ives back to where they moved into a studio together with her Finnish friend Maria Wilk. In contrast to these troubled teens Schjerfbeck later lived more than a decade in seclusion in a village approximately 30 kilometers from Helsinki. Together with her mother, she had to supply as a single woman, she lived in a confined space in a studio apartment. Under these conditions, they created a series of pictures, mostly women. In 1917 she met the art dealer Gösta Stenman know which enabled her to an exhibition.

Works

Your possibly best known work is Konvalescenten ( German: " The Convalescent "). Since 1888 The picture shows a smiling little girl caught up in a wicker chair, which surrounds with glassy eyes a delicate flower in the vase with the hands. It is believed that this is a self-portrait. Helene Schjerfbeck suffered all his life from the effects of a fall, she suffered as a child of four. Therefore, they had to give up a teaching position in later years, because she was the ascent to the classrooms too burdensome.

About forty self-portraits from almost 80 years of life are one of the focal points in Helene Schjerfbecks oeuvre.

Images of Women, as the reading girl of 1907, the pale baker's daughter from bright orange, a schoolgirl from 1928 with red mouth and bobbed hair, one kneeling in the sand girl she painted three times in the same pose with different means, and other, mostly female, portraits, often several times in a similar attitude, typical of them - particularly impressive: self-Portrait with Palette II, 1937-1945 arisen. Her mother, widowed, acting in the course of several images bony, almost absent.

A young woman with a torn string kantele contrasts cool of national romanticism and pathos drawn works of their contemporaries such as Akseli Gallen - Kallela.

On an oil painting of 1908, a school girl in a black dress against an empty background. A cone of light emphasizes their feet. Hair hanging in a braid dull down her delicate little head keeps them lowered, folded the pale face, a sharp nose, his hands before the wide dress. Withdrawn. Listening? Doubting? The picture is a question to the viewer, no statement of the painter.

Current reception

• 2007 Helene Schjerfbeck has attracted international attention with a retrospective in Paris, Hamburg and The Hague.
• 2012 dedicated to her the (museum) Ateneum in Helsinki at her 150th birthday with more than 300 pieces most comprehensive exhibition of her work. The exhibition was a great success with more than 230,000 visitors and will subsequently be shown in Sweden.
• 2012 was the Finnish National Bank a coin worth of € 2.00 on the occasion of the 150th birthday out.