Important Spring Sale presents Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Bukowskis presents "Isbildning" (Ice formations) by Akseli Gallen-Kallela at the seasons largest live auction – Important Spring Sale.

The Golden Age of Finnish art is said to have occurred between 1880 and 1916 and coincided with Finland's national awakening. Artists, sculptors, composers, architects, and writers delved into history and folklore to understand the true Finnish identity that they wished to convey through their creations. Of the Golden Age artists, it was undoubtedly Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) who most devotedly researched and was fascinated by the Finnish national spirit. This passion for the pure Finnish included a love of nature, which Gallen-Kallela believed had shaped the character of the Finnish people in many ways.

"Those who live and work much in nature eventually achieve such a personal relationship with their surroundings that they can almost catch themselves talking to the trees of the forest. Our folk poetry also attests to a deep empathy with nature being a characteristic of us Finns. We seem to have a particular inclination to personify it; the forest's flora becomes an intimate friend, one begins to discern different characters among the trees and confides in them different things: the slender birch something different than the grey, gnarled pine, the storm-twisted spruce, or the gloomily dark fir. And the nature person follows the life of the forest with entirely different eyes than anyone else. She observes the slightest changes therein, both in terms of the trees' colour, their health, and vitality. For such a person, the forest is not dead even on the coldest day in February – it is merely so quiet that this very silence speaks. In the undergrowth's cover, the pulsing strong and full life contains something reminiscent of the hibernating bear in its den."(–Akseli Gallen-Kallela, "The Book of Gallén-Kallela", Holger Schildt Publishing, Helsinki 1948.)