The artist Ahti Lavonen was one of the pioneers of Finnish informalism. As an opinionated writer, he was also a prominent and famous figure in the turbulent art field of Finland in the 1960s. Central to Lavonen's career as an artist was constant exploration and renewal. He gave up representativeness early on in his art and moved on to abstract expression. He divided his own production into different periods, centred around different colours. According to Lavonen, the choice of colours in his art was based on what stage of spiritual life he was going through at that given time. His black period began in the early 1960s with the spiritual awakening that Lavonen experienced, as a result of which the intense colours changed to an ascetic union of black and white. At the same time, his works began to show the interest in surface textures emphasizing materiality, typical to informalism.
After his black period, Lavonen again experienced restlessness and a need for renewal. The artist embarked on a journey towards his white period, during which he felt, in his words, that he had entered a pure area of abstract art where he could finally master the whole essence of art. As the white season culminated, thoughtful colour and silver details also appeared in his works. The short period that followed the white period has been characterized as Lavonen's silver period. At that time, Lavonen sought light and brightness in his works by frosting various structures with silver. The artist himself mentioned that the tremendous progress of space science in the 1960s and space thinking influenced his works during this period.
The silver episode may be regarded as the artist’s most distinctive stage, and as an artistic climax of sorts. Besides the universal silver, these works sometimes display pure and clear colour details in shimmering red, blue or yellow. Like other informalists, Lavonen also shunned form and movement to focus on expressing peace, spirituality and harmony guided by the material.
While informalism gave way fairly rapidly to other trends in Finland, its profound influences have continued into the art of our times.