Hugo Simberg

Finnish, 1873 - 1917

BiographyHugo Simberg began his study of art in 1891 at the Vyborg drawing school and continued his art education at the Fine Art Society of Finland in the years 1893-95. Later in 1895 he made contact with Akseli Gallen-Kallela and studied with him as a private pupil. Travel to London, extended stays in Paris, and a journey to Italy followed. In 1903 he completed his famous The Wounded Angel, today in the collection of the Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, which in 2006 was voted as Finland’s “National Painting”. In the years 1904-06 he frescoed St. John’s Church (today Tampere Cathedral) in Tampere. Simberg visited the USA briefly at the end of 1907 / outset of 1908, during which time he ventured to Niagara Falls.

A major protagonist of Finnish modernism, Simberg painted Symbolist fantasies, often involving the image of Death, inspired by Finnish folklore, in addition to portraits and landscapes. As one art historian has observed about Simberg’s art, “Common to all his art was a quest to uncover a hidden plane of reality” (Marja Lahelma, Hugo Simberg, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, 2017, back cover).

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