From 4 November 2025 to 22 February 2026, the Petit Palais – Museum of Fine Arts of the City of Paris presents the first French retrospective devoted to Pekka Halonen (1865–1933).
Entitled Pekka Halonen. A Hymn to Finland, this exceptional exhibition, organized in partnership with the Ateneum Art Museum – Finnish National Gallery (Helsinki), brings together more than 130 works from Finnish public and private collections.
👉 A rare immersion at the heart of the golden age of Finnish painting, amid snow, silence, and the quest for identity.
Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum (on deposit at the Presidential Palace). © Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Pakarinen
Painting Finland: art, resistance, and modernity
At the dawn of the 20th century, Finland was under Russian rule. In this tense political context, painting became a cultural and symbolic act.
Halonen’s work is rooted in National Romanticism and Karelianism, movements that celebrate landscapes, rural traditions, and founding myths.
His participation in the Paris World’s Fair, within the Finnish pavilion, marked a turning point: painting as a manifesto of identity.
👉 Deep forests, frozen lakes, peasant scenes: each canvas becomes a fragment of collective memory.
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Painting Finland, between identity and modernity
Pekka Halonen’s work belongs to the lineage of National Romanticism and Karelianism, artistic movements that exalt Finnish landscapes and traditions against a backdrop of political tension with Russian rule.
In 1900, his participation in the Paris World’s Fair, within the Finnish pavilion, took on major symbolic significance for the affirmation of Finnish national identity.
His paintings thus became true visual manifestos, celebrating wild nature, rural life, and the cultural resistance of a people.
Pekka Halonen, Tomatoes, 1913. Oil on cardboard, 51 × 42 cm. Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum. © Finnish National Gallery / Jenni Nurminen
Halosenniemi: living and painting in harmony with nature
Far from the bustle of Paris, Pekka Halonen chose to settle in Tuusula, on the shores of a lake. There he built Halosenniemi, his wooden house-studio, now a mythical site of Finnish culture.
In this self-sufficient environment, surrounded by his family and fellow artists, Halonen developed a philosophy of life in harmony with nature, which profoundly permeates his work.
Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum. © Finnish National Gallery / Aleks Talve
👉 Here, painting becomes an extension of everyday life, a breathing rhythm shaped by the seasons.
The painter of snow: a symphony in white
If one word were to sum up Pekka Halonen, it would be snow.
No other Finnish painter explored with such finesse:
- the nuances of white
- winter light
- the silence of snow-covered landscapes
In the 1920s, some works verge on abstraction, heralding a striking modernity.
Helsinki, Ateneum Art Museum. © Finnish National Gallery / Yehia Eweis
🔹 The final section of the exhibition, Symphony in White Major, offers a rare contemplative experience, where the gaze slows, becoming almost meditative.
An immersive and sensory exhibition at the Petit Palais
More than a retrospective, the Petit Palais offers a truly sensory experience:
- a refined, architecturally structured scenography
- olfactory installations developed with dsm-firmenich
- a meditative route inspired by Finnish nature
👉 A resolutely contemporary approach, bringing ecology, art, and perception into dialogue.
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