Finland’s most iconic exhibition of 2025 opens today at the Ateneum

The long-awaited "Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien" opens today at the Finnish National Gallery (Ateneum) in Helsinki. Something to look forward to for all Art Nouveau lovers.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (detail), 1917-1918, Belvedere (Vienna).

Gustav Klimt’s paintings for the first time in Finland

I’m very excited about the opening of the exhibition Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Vienna at the Ateneum, Helsinki’s major art museum. An exhibition presenting works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) would create a stir anywhere, but this will be the first time any of his paintings will be on display in Finland.

Klimt’s paintings are some of the highest-selling in the world. This mysterious figure (little is known about him personally) was a driving force of the renewal of art in Austria around 1900 and a figurehead of the Vienna Secession, an artistic movement which influenced art – Art Nouveau in particular – around the world and which today plays a fundamental role in the historiography of Art Nouveau.

His portraits of sensual, refined women in ornamental clothing adorn calendars, postcards, coasters and coffee mugs. Tourists flock to Vienna to see this most famous portraits at the Belvedere or his Beethoven frieze at the iconic Secession building.

Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1903-1907, Neue Galerie (New York). The painting is adorned with gold leaf and intricate patterns. Klimt also used silver and platinum leaf, over which he sometimes painted to obtain a variety of effects.

Vienna Secession and the Finnish Golden Age

Klimt epitomizes the period before World War I during which Vienna was a hub of culture, art and pioneering science such as psychiatry. This, after all, was the city of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Though Klimt was an introvert who did not indulge it the city’s vibrant and intellectual Kaffeekultur, he was highly involved in the renewal of the arts. His symbolic work reflects the sense of creativity, decadence and urgency that accompanied a certain feeling at the time that the end of the world was nigh. This soon seemed to come true with World War I and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Self-Portrait in Fresco, 1894, Private Collection. ©Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Parakinen

Austrian and Finnish art unite

Apart from the promise of works by Klimt and other major Viennese artists, the Ateneum aims to reveal the links that existed between Klimt, the Vienna Secession and Finland’s most famous painter of the Golden Age, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931). Insight into a relation between these two national icons is definitely an inspiring prospect.

Relations between the Vienna Secession (Art Nouveau) and Finnish National Romanticism, which often blends with Finland's form of Art Nouveau, are not greatly documented – Gallen-Kallela’s connection with Paris, or even America is much better known. Further documentation thanks to research into new archives and sources could also open new perspectives on the influences that came into play during the development of Finnish Art Nouveau. Scottish Arts and Crafts and the Vienna Secession greatly influenced each other, and late 19th-century Finnish architecture was influenced by Scotland is various ways. There could be something in that – not to mention the long-standing relationship that Finland has always had with German-speaking parts of Europe. Japonisme, symbolism and applied arts are other topics the exhibition will certainly focus on.

What can we expect?

"Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Wien" runs from 26 September 2025 to 1 February 2026. Though seeing any of Klimt’s works from his golden period, such as The Kiss or Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and II, cannot be contemplated – these are almost impossible for any museum to borrow – it will be wonderful to discover what Austrian works will be on display.

The Ateneum’s website promises, among others, works by the symbolist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and artist and craftsman Koloman Moser (1868-1918). Though the first died young, he created a hedonistic style that was truly his own, whereas Moser became one of the household names of the Vienna Secession and co-founded the Wiener Werkstätte, an alliance of artists and craftsmen whose aim was to place fine art and handicrafts on an even plain.

Emilie Flöge (1874-1952), Klimt’s life-long partner and fashion designer in her own right (she designed the long tunics that have become indissociable from representations of Gustav Klimt) will also be featured. Fun fact, Klimt never once made a self-portrait.

Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt wearing tunics designed by Flöge.

This will also certainly be the opportunity to see some of Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s famous and lesser-known works which were not on display in the great Gallen-Kallela retrospective that took place at the National Museum in 2022-2023.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lake View (detail), 1901.

Gustav Klimt’s famous portraits

As for the cover art of the exhibition, it features Klimt’s Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl, an unfinished portrait due to the outbreak of war and the artist's death in 1918 from Spanish flu. Klimt, who was a highly valued portraitist during his lifetime, is famous for his gold-covered likenesses, mainly of the wives of his bourgeois, often Jewish, patrons. Later, some of his works went through harrowing histories following the lootings that took place before and during the Second World War. As for Amalie Zuckerkandl, who worked as a nurse in Lviv during the First World War (another reason her portrait was not finished), she ultimately died in 1942 in a Polish concentration camp. Her portrait will certainly be the masterpiece of the exhibition.

Gustav developed his fascination for the use of gold leaf and other precious materials after visiting Italy and discovering the art of ancient mosaics. His father Ernst was also a gold engraver. What Klimt wanted, most of all, was a break with tradition and the old order, following a movement that was sweeping all through Europe. A reproduction of his famous Beethoven Frieze, which everyone will recognize, will also be part of the Ateneum’s exhibition. Today, as Klimt’s portraits no longer come up for sale, his drawings and landscapes are more and more sought-after, and it would also be lovely to see one or two of those.

Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze (detail), 1901-1902, Secession Building (Vienna).

New perspectives on Art Nouveau

As this iconic exhibition opens at the Ateneum, the big questions are: which of Klimt’s works will be on display on the fourth floor of the Ateneum? What new light will this iconic exhibition and its catalogue shed on the links between the Vienna Secession and Finnish art, and what role did Klimt play in this exactly? I'm dying to know if any new archives or sources have come to light and whether this can be seen to shed new understanding on the origins and development of Finnish Art Nouveau.

I also look forward to finding out more about Gallen-Kallela’s participation in exhibitions and projects in Austria, and, after all this, I really look forward to the trip I’ve planned to Vienna in December!