Landscape

Artist Jukka Mäkelä (1949–2018) is particularly known for his large-scale, Neo-Expressionist acrylic paintings. Mäkelä graduated from the School of the Fine Arts Academy of Finland in 1972 and was part of the generation that revolutionised Finnish painting at the turn of the 1980s. He represented Finland at the Venice Biennale in 1988. Mäkelä’s works have been exhibited extensively, for example, in the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in 1999, Kunsthalle Helsinki in 2015, and the Sara Hildén Art Museum in winter 2023.

Formerly hung in the staircase of the Natural Sciences Building II (now Agora) before its renovation, the nearly six-metre-wide Landscape (1987) was donated by the Turku University Foundation in 1988. Mäkelä typically drew inspiration for his works from nature, its lights, shadows, colours and shapes. Although the painting is entitled Landscape, it is perhaps more a depiction of some strong emotion or state of mind than a figurative landscape. The work is characterised by a sense of strong physicality common to Mäkelä’s works from the 1980s: hints of brown, pink, blue and gold peek through whirls and masses of black and white brushstrokes, formed by large body movements. The painting process was central to Mäkelä’s art: the work had to be completed in one sitting, before the paint dried. In this way, the painting’s subject matter became the event that birthed it – the act of painting itself.

Emma Vuolaslempi 2024