Beloved in Finland, Helene Schjerfbeck is just becoming hot in Manhattan, where a show of paintings at the Met Museum is likely to leave you awe-struck.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/arts/design/helene-schjerfbeck-met-museum.html?smid=em-share
“f you dislike the shortened daylight of winter, please know that you are luckier than Helene Schjerfbeck. A Finnish painter of copious gifts, she spent most of her life in or around Helsinki, contemplating cold skies and winters that lasted for more than half the year. On the other hand, she found an alternate light source through her paintings, many of which are portraits and self-portraits whose warm internal glow rescues their forms from surrounding darkness.
“Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck” offers a moving introduction to an artist whose name you probably do not know. Although Schjerfbeck, who died in 1946, at age 83, is one of the two or three most celebrated artists in Finland, where the tributes include the 2020 biopic “Helene,” she has remained a relative stranger here. This is the first major show of her work in New York in a generation, and the Met claims it owns the one and only painting of hers that resides in this country. Titled “The Lace Shawl” (1920), it was purchased in 2023, a crucial first step in building local recognition for an artist’s work…” (more at NY Times))
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/arts/design/helene-schjerfbeck-met-museum.html?smid=em-share