Kalervo Palsa
Hugo Kalervo Palsa (✦March 12, 1947 – †October 3, 1987), or Kalle, was a Finnish artist in a style that has been described as fantastic realism.
Long neglected, Kalervo Palsa has enjoyed a revival of sorts since the publication of critical works, a biography, and two major retrospectives in Helsinki and Pori.
The art of Kalervo Palsa
Kalervo Palsa used an incredibly varied palette of techniques and materials even including housepaint. The subjects with the richest content generally received the most hurried and crude treatment. The over 1000 self-portraits on the other hand generally were treated at the very least with competent technique.
Mostly the works explore in graphic detail the dark side of humanity in general and his native northern regions specifically. Grotesque sexuality, sadism, homosexuality, bisexuality, and a general emotional frigidity paraphilia reflect his own inner turmoil and were perhaps a reaction to the mental atmosphere of his hometown.
Palsa did have a brief fling with abstract art while staying in New York, but as he recounts in his diary, that phase came to an abrupt halt when one day he saw a passed-out black man sprawled on a subway bench.
Besides Hieronymous Bosch, his work has been compared to that of Frida Kahlo.
- Samples of paintings by Kalervo Palsa
Influences
Palsa drew a great deal of influence from both the lives and works of numerous painters, writers, and philosophers. Painters who influenced him include Magritte and Vincent van Gogh. His works include clear references to such people as Jean-Paul Sartre, Strindberg, and Jean Genet, and many more subtle influences are listed on the first page of Eläkeläinen muistelee, where he mentions such kindred spirits as Jonathan Swift and Vladimir Lenin among many others.
Despite this brand of what might be called intertextuality, some researchers have noted that though he remained active in his work up to his death in 1987, his work did not show signs of the postmodernism evident in the work of many other artists of the time.
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