The Saastamoinen Foundation's art collection has grown to its current 1900 works from a few artworks originally acquired for the home collection of a family of Kuopio industrialists. The visitors will see appr. 500 works at the exhibition.
Exhibitions of the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection
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Highlights of the collection »
The Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection represents a broad cross-section of Finnish painting. The cornerstone of the collection is Finnish expressionist art of the 1910s, the main artists being Tyko Sallinen, Ilmari Aalto, Marcus Collin and Anton Lindforss.
Over half of the works in the collection belong to the extensive body of contemporary art. This highly diverse field is represented in the collection by paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, object works, photographs, videos and installations.
Systematic acquisition of international contemporary art was begun in 1997. The collection spans some fifty works, most of them from Italy and Spain, with sculpture represented by Mimmo Paladino and painting by Manolo Valdes.
The Saastamoinen Foundation was set up in 1968 by Liisa and Osmo P. Karttunen as a general cultural foundation, one of its main functions being to develop and display the art collection. From 1980 to 1999, the collection was housed at Kuopio Art Museum. Since December 1999, it has been deposited with the City of Espoo. The Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection constitutes the Art Museum’s permanent collection, and will be complemented by numerous changing exhibitions.