Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 92

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LE NORD
race of West Finland, she was deeply religious, unyielding in
the battle of life. During Wáinö Aaltonen’s childhood, his family
lived near Turku, where the youth, instinctively finding his way
towards art, attended the drawing-school under old Victor
Westerholm.
Of his parents the artist has said: “I am certain that I in-
herited the thirst for beauty from both of them, from my mother,
a strong nature which will not break or bend, and from my
father quick thought and tirelessness in work”. His artistic gifts
expressed themselves in many ways: music had a strong attract-
ion for him — but his incipient deafness quashed any desire
to pursue it. In the drawing-school he was really trained to
paint, an art which he has never really deserted. He finally be-
came a sculptor because it really was the inner urge of his nature.
The basis of the technique of sculpture, how the hammer and
chisel must be used, he learnt as a boy from simple workers. But
when, as a young sculptor he was asked how he had learnt the
secret of his art, he smilingly pointed to the smooth surfaces and
Ice Age scratches of the shore cliffs, to the play of light and
shade in the geological formation.
There is certainly very much of the so-called natural genius
and self-taught knowledge in the development of Wáinö Aal-
tonen, but at the same time there is a rare intensity and con-
centration of work, conscious study, and an incessant desire to
conquer new realms. His creative disposition is an example of
the toughness and racial inflexibility of the Finnish people,
added to whích are his own more significant characteristics,
which have perhaps not always had an advantageous effect —
it may sometimes appear as if a freer and more idealistic con-
ception of his work would more easily lead to a more compre-
hensible result. It has even been possible to seek points of com-
parison with his individuality in Neolithic times, that is to say
in the Finnish weapons shaped like animals’ heads. In any case
it is obvious that the human beings of Aaltonen’s art are a race
apart with a special style of beauty, whether it is to be explained
as a racial inheritance from ancient times or whether it is to be
sought in the artist’s own soul and ideal forms. The different
figures of his statues resemble each other, are organically related,
and gradually form a real genealogical series. His people, espe-
cially the single statues, belong to a race of their own, whose male
representatives have a proud strength and a sculptural balance