a Donation of Works of Art

The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma has received a donation of over 3000 works of art by the Kittilä-born artist Kalervo Palsa. The donation also includes material connected with the artist's work, and was made by Kalervo Palsa's long-time friend and sponsor Maj-Lis Pitkänen, to whom Palsa left his artistic estate in his will. Included are paintings, drawings, sketches, prints, sculptures, and sketchbooks, as well as Kalervo Palsa's diaries and comics, and other material from his archives, such as his notebooks and essays from school, notes and drafts, printed matter he produced, material connected with his exhibitions, letters, photographs, objects, newspaper clippings, and documents.

Kalervo Palsa was born in Kittilä in Finnish Lapland on 12 March 1947. He studied in Helsinki at the Trade School of the Institute of Industrial Arts and continued at the School of Fine Arts Academy of Finland, but never felt at home in the city. After his studies he returned to Kittilä, which, he felt, was the only place where he could live and work.

Palsa was interested in the perversity of the human mind. Brutal expressions of sexuality and death were strong elements in his art. The brighter side was represented by landscapes from his native Lapland and tranquil still lifes. Palsa's most intensive creative period lasted about twenty years. Palsa began to be able to distance himself mentally from Kittilä after spending six months in Gerlesborg, Sweden, and after travelling to New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and other places abroad. However, after his travels Palsa contracted pneumonia, and in October 1987 he was found dead in his studio.