Kuutti Lavonen, Heimo Suntio: Strokes

Drawing is the common thread connecting two artists originally from Kotka, Kuutti Lavonen and Heimo Suntio. The art of Suntio and Lavonen is refreshingly traditional in the best sense of the word, reflecting a deep respect for the significance of art itself. Living at the Lallukka Artists’ Home in Helsinki, the two artists share coffee with fellow residents every other Saturday, providing an ideal opportunity to exchange ideas. For quite some time, they have been developing the concept of a joint exhibition. It is quite possible that Traces (Piirtoja), on view at Galleria Pictor, was first conceived over one of these Saturday coffee gatherings.

Graphic artist Kuutti Lavonen and sculptor Heimo Suntio are united by drawing: Lavonen draws with a pencil, while Suntio draws through sculpture. Suntio “draws” his sculptures with fragmented structures whose edges resemble the marks of a thick pencil. In Lavonen’s work, one finds a similar roughness of expression—he disrupts classical draftsmanship with restless, energetic lines.

Both artists focus on the human figure. Suntio incorporates highly conceptual elements into his figures, while Lavonen engages in dialogue particularly with the Renaissance tradition of depicting the human form. At the same time, the refined and richly textured surfaces of paintings by Lavonen’s father, painter Ahti Lavonen, provided important inspiration for Suntio at the beginning of his career.

Kuutti Lavonen (b. 1960) studied at the Art Institute of Urbino in Italy and graduated as a printmaker from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 1984. He has served as Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, worked as an art critic, and published poetry. Lavonen is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the Neapolitan Baroque painter Bernardo Cavallino. His works are included in the collections of numerous art museums in Finland and abroad.

Heimo Suntio (b. 1955) fragments the human figure in his sculptures, assembling it from separate parts in order to reveal the emotional state he seeks to portray. The themes of his sculptures arise either from his extensive reading or from the everyday experiences of an aging man. Suntio’s most recent public commission is a portrait sculpture of historian Henrik Meinander. His works are represented in the collections of the Finnish State, the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, the Oulu Museum of Art, the Wihuri Foundation, and the Helsinki Art Museum, among others.

Free entrance