The exhibition The Collection of Nordea Art Foundation Finland gives wider audience the opportunity to see the Foundation's collection. The artworks have been limitedly displayed at the Old Banking Hall on Aleksanterinkatu in Helsinki and in joint exhibitions by the Association of Finnish Fine Arts Foundations.

 

The Nordea Art Foundation is a non-profit foundation that works for the benefit of Finnish art, art history and the history of commercial banking. The Foundation's art collection brings together the art collections of more than twenty Finnish commercial banks from over a period of more than 100 years. The collection of over a thousand works is of national importance and includes important works of art from the 19th century and the Golden Age of Finnish Art, as well as a wide range of Finnish art from the 20th century. The exhibition at the Didrichsen Art Museum features a representative selection of works from the Nordea Art Foundation Finland's collection from the early 19th century to the turn of the 21st century.

​

The exhibition includes Akseli Gallen-Kallela's well-known works The Lament of the Boat (1907) and C. G. E. Mannerheim (1929), as well as Helene Schjerfbeck's Boy dressed in Armour (1894) and Silence (1907). The modern part of the Foundation's collection includes Sam Vanni's Window (1944), Rut Bryk's Three Cactus Flowers (1950s) and Juhana Blomstedt's Dialogue (1967).

​

The exhibition explores the relationship between banks, art collecting and artists, and studies individual works in their art historical context. The selection of works highlights the depiction of the Finnish landscape and people in art, the Modernist turn of the early 20th century and the strong representation of abstract art in the collection from the 1950s onwards. The changes are reflected in the different focuses of collecting in the different decades. Collecting has been regular but not systematic: between 1960s and the 1980s, in particular, contemporary art was bought into the collections, but during the economic growth in the 1980s more and more artworks from the Golden Age of Finnish Art were added to the collection. Often the works were acquired for public space, which imposed conditions on their content

 

Read more about the art foundation on Nordea Art Foundation Finland's website

​

The Collection of Nordea Art Foundation Finland 10.2.–26.5.2024

​

Extended opening hours until 26.5.2024

Tue–Sun 10–18

Mon closed