Abstract

Akseli Gallen-Kallela is often discussed as the national painter of Finland, as one who helped define Finnishness when Finland was still a colonized area of Russia. However, his trip to Africa from 1909-1911 shows where Gallen-Kallela acts as a pictorial colonizer himself, not only sympathizing with the Africans but representing them through a European cosmopolitan lens, as purer and closer to nature, but still inferior. The assumptions inherent in his representations of Africa reveal that Gallen-Kallela is not only a colonized subject but a colonizer of his own country.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Comparative Arts and Letters

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