Lot 225: Reidar Särestöniemi , Finnish 1925-1981 Optimistiset vaunut (midnight sun over lapland) oil on canvas

signed and dated Reidar Sàrestòniemi 68 lower right oil on canvas

120 by 120cm., 47¼ by 47¼in.

Sale: Bukowskis, Helsinki, 28 November 1998, lot 156
Purchased by the present owner at the above sale

The vivid palette and visible inspiration of the traditions and stories of the people of Lapland and their natural environment are distinctive elements in the oeuvre of Reidar Särestöniemi. Apart from several years of study at the Finnish Art Society's drawing school, the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki and the Ilya Repin Institute in Leningrad between the years of 1947 to 1959, Särestöniemi spent the entirety of his life at his family farm in his beloved Lappish countryside.

Born Reidar Kaukonen, his family renamed themselves after their farm near the Ounaskoji River. This deep-rooted identification with the flora and fauna of Lapland and his cultural heritage extended to a visual language seen in his most creative and controversial works of the 1960s and 1970s. Motifs such as willow grouse, lynx, peatlands, fells, rams and reindeer feature consistently in his paintings, and the vibrancy of nature and the Lappish folkloric element form the foundation of the artist's best-known works of this period.

Works such as the present are large-scale illustrations of an emotional connection with a cultural and natural landscape, influenced by European Modernism, Russian art and pre-historic cave paintings.