Pekka Halonen, the Painter of the Snow

The Petit Palais in Paris is dedicating a major retrospective to Pekka Halonen, one of the leading exponents of Finnish painting between the 19th and 20th centuries. Trained in Paris, where he studied under Paul Gauguin, Halonen successfully blended the influences of Synthetism and Japonism with a profound connection to the nature of his homeland. The exhibition offers a journey through the wild landscapes and extreme seasons of the North, highlighting his reputation as a "painter of snow," capable of capturing the light and silence of Finnish winter with a unique chromatic sensibility. Halonen's studio-residence, Halosenniemi, on the shores of Lake Tuusula, was the heart of his artistic life and the place where he developed his pictorial language, characterized by simplicity and introspection. Nature, domestic life, and moments of everyday quiet become universal subjects, observed with a sense of harmony that unites Nordic Realism and French modernity. The first major retrospective dedicated to Halonen in France, the exhibition highlights his role as a bridge between the Symbolist tradition and the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, while also offering a contemporary reflection on landscape and its transformation. His forests, lakes, and snows today take on a new meaning, as images of a changing natural world, but also as evidence of an artistic sensibility capable of combining intimacy with a universal vision.