An exhibition opening in the Kadriorg Art Museum will bring to Tallinn works by the great Finnish artists Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck et al

A comprehensive exhibition introducing one of the most abundant and diverse art collections in Finland will be open in the Kadriorg Art Museum from 28 February. The exhibition Symphony of Art and Nature: The Serlachius Collection will display more than 70 artworks from the collection.

The exhibition includes works by the brightest stars of Finnish art: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Helene Schjerfbeck and Hugo Simberg. In addition to their oeuvre, the display includes works by international old masters, among others a masterpiece by the 17th-century Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, and by Finnish contemporary artists: Anna Retulainen, Anu Tuominen et al.

“The exhibition offers a comparison of classics of Finnish art, old masters of Western European art and Finnish contemporary art; all of the works in the collection display artistic excellence. The exhibition offers an overview of the development of the collection from its early days to the present, enabling viewers to observe both the universal and the unique aspects of the art,” said one of the curators of the exhibition, Greta Koppel.

“Our goal as curators was to provide as comprehensive an overview of the collection as possible without focusing too much on any concrete topic, school of art or particular era. We have taken a playful approach: our goal is to trigger the viewer’s curiosity and to make room for creating personal meanings and associations,” added the other curator of the exhibition, Tomi Moisio.

The core of the collection founded by the Finnish industrialist Gösta Serlachius (1876–1942) consists of works from the Golden Age of Finnish art, i.e. from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a special focus on the oeuvre of Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

This exhibition in the Kadriorg Art Museum is the first time that the Serlachius Collection has been displayed in Estonia. A special focus is on the works of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, the favourite artist of the collection’s founder, Gösta Serlachius. The display includes sixteen works by Gallen-Kallela, including some of his best-known works, e.g. Problem (Symposium) (1894) and Spring (1902‒1903). The latter was displayed at the recent grand exhibition Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien in the Ateneum Art Museum, and it is also the signature piece of this exhibition.

“It is a great joy and honour to bring to the Kadriorg Art Museum such a representative selection of the crème de la crème of the Serlachius Collection. We are deeply grateful to the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation and the museum for their trust, friendly cooperation and extraordinary generosity, manifested in the large number of works on display but also in the fact that more than ten of the works come from the permanent display of the collection’s home museum,” emphasised the director of the Kadriorg Art Museum, Aleksandra Murre.

Gösta Serlachius: one of Finland’s most influential art patrons

The founder of the art foundation, Gösta Serlachius, was one of the most influential art patrons in Finland in his lifetime. Having gained his fortune in a timber business

established in Mänttä in central Finland, Serlachius began regularly collecting art in the early 20th century. He was particularly fond of and focused his attention on the works of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, whom Serlachius knew personally. The first survey exhibition of the Serlachius Collection was held in the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki in 1919. Even then, the collection garnered attention with its good representation of Finnish women artists (e.g. Fanny Churberg, Helene Schjerfbeck and Ellen Thesleff) and the high level of works by Western European masters, but the large number of works from the early creative period of Akseli Gallen-Kallela was the aspect of the collection that was most appreciated.

Gallen-Kallela’s death (1931) reminded the collector of his own mortality and made him think about the fate of the collection. In 1933 he founded the Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation to safeguard the continuity and preservation of his collection in Mänttä, raising the profile of the local community. Gösta Serlachius mainly collected Finnish art created by his contemporaries, hence the collecting policy of the foundation today also focuses on acquiring contemporary Finnish and international art.

The Serlachius Foundation has also taken on the responsibility of making sure that masterpieces of Finnish art circulating in the global art market end up in a public collection. For example, Helene Schjerfbeck’s significant work Red-Haired Girl II (1915), which is part of the display in Kadriorg, was bought at an international art auction in the UK ten years ago. At the same time, quite a few paintings by Sjerfbeck in the Serlachius Collection are currently loaned out and on display at a comprehensive survey exhibition of Sjerfbeck’s art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Serlachius Museum is located amidst picturesque woods and lakes in Mänttä-Vilppula, between Tampere and Jyväskylä. The title of the exhibition in the Kadriorg Art Museum also refers to the harmonious co-existence of nature and art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a diverse public programme.

As part of the exhibition programme, a seminar on art patronage and the relationship between economics and art will be held on 27 April.

The exhibition Symphony of Art and Nature: The Serlachius Collection will remain open in the Kadriorg Art Museum until 23 August 2026.

Curators: Greta Koppel and Tomi Moisio
Exhibition design: Kaarel Eelma
Graphic design: Tuuli Aule
Public and educational programmes: Kerttu Männiste and Jelena Tšekulajeva
With the support of the Finnish Institute in Estonia