Olli Lyytikäinen The recorder player on a summer Sunday

It is a privilege to be befriended by a great personality. In the case of Olli Lyytikäinen we are talking about one of the most important artists – and personalities – of our time, a genius. He was a master at anything the took up: drawing, painting, paper folding, fire making, sauna heating, cycling, dining, travelling, ice-lantern making…

LIGHT AND BRIGHTNESS

Olli's talent did not derive from training or education, but from natural enthusiasm and curiosity: he became interested in something and kept asking, looking and searching, leafing through an encyclopedia or turning the object over and over until he found the answer. His point of view was different and his questions so intriguing that any professional would willingly explain the ins and outs of his particular field in an understandable way. He attracted help and kindness, always aimed at doing, solving or pondering something. Olli was a terrific person. Talking, playing the banjo, conversing, listening to music or leafing through books (not so much actually reading) were all activities as important to him as making pictures. He cunningly masked his unexpected verbal fireworks, never giving the listener a chance to find out where he got his metaphors from. He probably fired them off straight from his head, which is why they are impossible to render in writing.

THE THRIVING HARVESTERS

Such was the magic of Olli's works that anyone who saw them became a fan of his. The late 1960s and all of the 1970s were a time characterised by social and political issues, but the doings of that world were of no interest to him. It is quite dramatic to realise that while society and the media were focusing on major themes, say ”the community”, the most important artist of the time was someone depicting "little things and the individual". Perhaps that was because Olli did not proclaim the truth but showed us the value of the minute and the meaning in the mundane.

Olli's exhibitions were always an event. The performances at Cheap Tricks and Artek in a way brought culture in general onto a higher level; they really were the talk of town. Little by little, the news spread around the grapevine, making him an international star: The Drawing Center in New York, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Venice Biennale … Olli's telephone kept ringing heralding fruitful meetings. And our Elonkorjaajat (Harvesters) circle was thriving: Olle Mallander was invited to work as a critic for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter in Stockholm; Olli commenced a relationship with Kaija Saariaho, Ilkka Juhani Takalo-Eskola painted breathtaking exhibitions and our get-togethers were a firework of family, fun and fantasies. We gave a great Scandinavian exhibition tour Tajunnan tarroja ('Mental Stickers') taking in the Amos Anderson Museum in Helsinki, the Nordens Hus in Reykjavik and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

THE COUNTRY BOY IN THE CITY

Olli's parents' buying a little summer cottage in their native Heinävesi was extremely important for him. Heinävesi was the most harmonious place in his life: he had had a happy childhood and now he somehow felt an affinity for the place. There he was not just somebody sitting in a cafe. We visited Olli's grandmother, ate bread she had baked, wandered in Olli's childhood surroundings – and somehow one could sense how he relocated himself both in terms of his past and the increasingly dominant current cultural field.

The impact of Heinävesi was turned into several series of artworks. Once, on a misty autumn night, thousands of migrating white-fronted geese flew over us. We could not actually see the birds but we could hear them calling and communicating with each other. In the opaquely grey night, we photographed the valley landscape. taking pictures of an outbuilding with 30-minute exposure. I can see the sounds of the geese in many of Olli's paintings. He made snow lanterns, which inspired the fine series Lumiukko ja lumilinna (Snow Castle and Snowman) which echoes the family Christmases. These have turned out to be some of the last harmonious works in his production.

THE DARK AGE

Kaija's music took us close to the association Korvat Auki ('Ears open'), such personalities as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Magnus Lindberg and Paavo Heininen and the field of budding contemporary music. Kaija needed a regular life in order to concentrate on her work, and Olli's alcoholism became intolerable. We tried every means possible to get him to therapy. Top experts, friendly advice and efforts – to no avail. The fire in Olli's studio, which destroyed the greater part of his production, was symbolically significant. We tried to wash off slides and get the sketchbooks dry but there is not much that can be done when the floor is covered by a three-foot layer of charred and thoroughly soaked black remains.

Kaija could take no more and a separation was inevitable. Olli tried again but his sober spells never lasted long enough. Art gallery owners and arrangers of exhibitions formed the backbone of his schedule but Olli himself received no satisfaction out of creating art, which had used to be his passion. Like a true artist, he still employed his pain and despair, and thus all of his late production is a portrayal of angst and disintegration. Death is closing in, rather as it does in the works of Helene Schjerfbeck. Destruction, break-up, disintegration, blackness, darkness, chaos, obscurity displace what used be so bright, clear and luminous.

Olli's life was already heavily burdened. Still, at his best, he could shine like a star. A good example of this "king at night, beggar in the morning " attitude was the Scandinavia Today event in the USA.

The review of contemporary art at the Guggenheim also included our friend Per Kirkeby. My own solo exhibition in Washington had already opened, so I travelled to New York. Olli was in a dreadful state and the entire opening day was a disaster. I returned to Washington the following day. Stuart Wrede had invited a group of friends to his place in New Haven, and as I was worried about Olli, I phoned Stuart to ask him how things were. He told me that the night had been a real triumph of culture and rapture, with the swishing of the Sphinx' wings – and starring Olli.

SECLUSION

It is a sad and unjust fate to be forced to partake in the destruction of a great personality. Olli shut himself up in his studio and only communicated over the phone. My last encounter with him is a mystery, as yet unsolved.

I was on another six-month visit to the USA and working in Washington. One night I was woken by terrible chest pains. I was afraid that I might die and it took me half an hour to sit up in bed. I tried to reach out to Sally sleeping next to me in order to wake her but the awful pain made this seem to take forever. Sally helped me get dressed, hoisted me into the car and as the fabulous Bethesda hospitals were almost next door, I was soon taken care of. I spent the night in the ER and was thoroughly checked. In the morning the pain eased and four doctors analysed the test results. They told me that because I was in a hospital complaining about pain, they concluded that I had some kind of myocardiac inflammation. But this conclusion was in no way seconded by the x-rays or tests. ”Lay off the white candy and smoking and get back to work.”

There was nothing else to do but to follow the doctors' orders. The next day the telephone rang in my study. It was Stefu (Kaija's brother-in-law) phoning to tell me that Olli was dead. I had had my attack at exactly the same time as he had passed away.

Antero Kare
The writer is an artist and friend of Olli Lyytikäinen