Gallery
The gallery's main exhibition changes by theme once a year. The exhibition is mainly based on the museum's own collections, but Särestöniemi's works from other collections are also borrowed for the exhibitions.
Reidar Särestöniemi built the gallery next to his first studio home in 1972. Architects Reima and Raili Pietilä designed a great log building that blends perfectly into the surrounding landscape. Särestöniemi was one of the most famous artists of his time, who was visited by many people, from ordinary travelers to art buyers and state guests. The gallery functioned as both an exhibition and representative space with saunas.
In the gallery's swimming pool, Särestöniemi could swim like a seal in the middle of his paintings.
Exhibition in the gallery
ARCTIC MORNING
- AT THE SOURCES OF REIDAR'S CREATIVITY
Reidar Särestöniemi: Arctic Morning (1966)
Kittilä municipality
Gallery 13.12.2022- 30.11.2023
The paintings of artist Reidar Särestöniemi (1925-1981) depict the northern nature of the changing seasons, where life takes place with its joys, sorrows and pleasures. Nature is like a lens through which we look at human life. Reidar described his work:
"That this research is amazing to me,
that the object is nature and I am still investigating myself.
And I look inward and deep.”
In the exhibition's title work, Arctic Morning (1966, Kittilä municipality), a bearded lynx plays to the charm of spring that conquers the senses.
Ilves is Reidar's incarnation, his self-image. Reidar described:
"Usually my lynx has webbed hands in front of its paws and a red beard.
Also, it calls that sparrow,with which to look at the well.
It's very musical and has all the gifts I don't have
- and yet it's me."