Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Síða 91

WAINÖ AALTONEN
85
World Exhibition in 1900, the sculptor Emil Elalonen appeared
side by side with the young Juho Rissanen; the great wood reliefs
of the former rank with the compositions “At the Fortune-
teller’s” and “The blind Woman” of the latter; it may be said
that here was already the content and material of the national,
independent plastic art; later, both Wikström and Elalonen
worked also in granite.
In the second decade of the new century, a powerful inner
development took place in the art of Finland, expressing itself
with special violence in painting, its most original representa-
tive being T. K. Sallinen, also well known in Scandinavia. This
development, emerging from the general European movement
preceding the first World War, had in Finland almost the
character of a volcanic eruption, due to the special stamp of
national and historical conditions — there was something fierce
and explosive in its expression. The movement naturally had
its counterpart in the sphere of sculpture — to be truly plastic,
sculpture had to be equally strong in its sculptural form, just as
firm in rhythm as painting had to be purely picturesque in its
efforts. The young Wainö Aaltonen, with his first work about
1915, became the representative both of the reaction and the new
synthesis in sculpture.
The volcanic current of the time runs also at the basis of
Aaltonen’s artist personality, perhaps even stronger and more
exacting than in the other young artists. The urge to plastic
expression, hidden deep in the national soul, in him passionately
seeks an outflow; the national trend of his art is a necessity
dictated by nature. But as a sculptor he has, in a corresponding
degree, strengthened the demand for plastic rest and harmony;
the classical need for perfection and desire for beauty are pas-
sionately alive in him already in his first artistic attempts. Thus
his art has become a combination full of power and at the same
time a summarised result of the century-long strivings of sculp-
ture in Finland.
Aaltonen, who was born in 1894, is of farmer’s stock on
both his mother’s and father’s sides; two other well known ar-
tists, the sculptors Yrjö Liipola and Aarre Aaltonen, belong to
his mother’s family. Wáinö Aaltonen’s father was a poor village
tailor, known for his quick intelligence — it is also said that
there are some drops of Italian blood in the father’s family
through an earlier generation. The mother belonged to the staid