Visual arts Kaj Stenvall has been painting duck characters for over 30 years, but he still wonders what can result from “stealing” the character.

In autumn 1972 Kaj Stenvall studied for the second year at the Turku School of Drawing, when he participated in the State Art Competition based on free supply.

The exhibition based on the competition was on display at both the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum and the Turku Art Museum. It featured a lot of artists participating in the competition, including Stenvall’s teachers.

Stenvall won the FIM 2,000 State Art Prize for his realistic paintings depicting ordinary people in the competition. He was only a sophomore art student at the time.

“It was amusing. No one reacted to the award in any way, the teachers were completely silent about it at school, ”Stenvall recalls.

He found the atmosphere in Turku restrained and challenging for a student who had moved from Tampere.

Kaj Stenvall: Play for It, Oil on Canvas, 1972. The work is one of those in which Stenvall won the State Art Prize.

Success was not born out of nowhere. Determined drawing and painting began as early as school. The father encouraged me to apply to study architecture in the footsteps of my grandfather.

15-year-old Stenvall thought about studying furniture and even attended an information session at the School of Art and Design. In the end, Visual Arts took the victory, and Stenvall ended up studying in Turku.

Turku was chosen from different options due to its underground business.

“I thought that if I didn’t get to the School of Drawing, I would paint myself in Turku. I had already painted with oil paints in Tampere and got to know the artists. Specially Kimmo Kaivanto made an impression on me.”

In Turku, the prevailing traditional values ​​were questioned, turned on their heads. The instruments were satire and irony. The whole world of thought was colored by the underground, the counterculture.

Young Stenvall was interested in American pop art and surrealists such as René Magritte. There was also enough interest in the roots of the performing arts, the production of old painters. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Velázquez are names that flicker in the artist’s speech.

Nowadays a large number of people are familiar with Kaj Stenvall’s paintings, starring an expressive and adaptive duck character.

They will be seen again at Gallery Bronda, where Kaj Stenvall, who turned seventy on Christmas Day, will be celebrating both his birthday and the 50th anniversary of the artist, which begins next year.

However, Stenvall’s artistic career began with realistic paintings in which man, work, and nature rose to prominence. Gradually, the expression turned in a more symbolic direction, and the influences were reflected, among other things, in the Golden Age artist. Magnus Enckellin production.

Eventually, in the 1980s, the postmodern imagery, the combination of different materials, and the proliferation of popular cultural references led Stenvall toward 1989 and the birth of the first duck painting.

“In the 1980s, I matured to think that I could create my own world by combining different elements. My goal is to create something that hasn’t existed, ”Stenvall says

He adds that he feels that making performing arts always requires existing starting points rather than mere imagination.

Kaj Stenvall: The Power of the Red Hat, Oil on Canvas, 1999.

In 1989 a clear phase began as the duck-like character grew into the lead.

“What if I completely take the character out of context and transport it to another reality? I like to create tension between worlds by connecting more than two worlds. To quote a duck, to quote popular culture, and to quote art history, I create a momentary parallel reality. What could be the result? ” Stenvall says he thought.

The instruments sound like tools of pop art and surrealism, and the end result was a success. Traditional figurative oil painting as a technique alienates duck works from the catalog of popular culture to such an extent that the connection to the cartoon is no longer essential.

The works appear as a parallel reality.

“I’m challenging the viewer at the same time, I’m not kidding, but I believe this could be true.”

Three the first duck was on display at the regional show in Pori in the autumn of 1989. The feedback was immediately new, more abundant than before. The duck made the works approachable, and the audience was enthusiastic.

“Through the character, I got humanity involved. The character and thoughts were reflected in the duck’s face and gestures. ”

The use of a carefully guarded brand thrilled Stenvall. Stealing the character for his own purposes is still exciting, he says, but at the same time it keeps an interesting, underground-spirited idea of ​​what happens if the phone rings in the middle of the night and Disney lawyers are calling.

Of course, copyright issues were formally clarified from the outset. Professor specializing in them Jukka Kemppinen stated that the duck in Stenvall ‘s works is equivalent to the use of written quotations and is thus permissible.

Kaj Stenvall: Rhythm in the Light (and Pants on the Foot), Oil on Canvas, 1998.

Stenvall says he quickly realized that using a duck character doesn’t limit anything. Over the years, the character has actually bent anywhere, and quite often it can be interpreted as an artist’s self-portrait, a kind of mixture of fears and desires.

In the beginning, ducks were also a critical success. The first exhibition at the Hagelstam Gallery in 1990 received Erkki Pirtolan write a review in Ilta-Sanomat.

At the same time, however, the art trade ended in an unprecedented recession in Finland. Probably because of this, the ducks ’first real success show was in 1993 at Galleria Bronda.

The popularity continued throughout the 1990s, and the exhibition at the Art Gallery in the summer of 2000 attracted a lot of interest.

At the same time as the works began to be made into cards and posters and the duck became the duck of the whole nation, critical voices also began to be heard.

The media and colleagues were no longer sympathetic, and it was not easy to get used to the poor reception and nasty stuff. Stenvall was barked at as commercial and calculating.

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“Perhaps the fact that I have not networked within the field and have not studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, for example, has made it easier to present criticism, including personal criticism,” Stenvall reflects.

Kaj Stenvall began to receive criticism for his duck character, commercialism, and calculability. In the 2010s, he began painting works about iconic powers.

Eventually the duck remained completely in the side for six years. In the 2010s, Stenvall painted mainly iconic powers Putin To the trump as well as current Finnish politicians, such as Juha Sipilää and Antti Rinneen.

Now the return to the ducks has been a kind of return home.

The new works are even more liberated for Stenvall. The duck-themed works have enchanting light and are painted more casually than ever before.

Much of it is painted as a single painting in one go, which differs from the previous way of painting in a faster and more straightforward way.

Now the new paintings are on display for the first time.

Surrealism, funny conceptualism, mystery, and references to old art are again at the forefront of Stenvall’s works.

Or duck – or should I write Duck? Many think he seems to be in the lead regardless of the world Stenvall has placed him in.

Kaj Stenvall’s works will be on display at Galleria Bronda on 9.1. until.

Kaj Stenvall is back with the ducks again.

Kaj Stenvall: Take a Picture, Donald, Oil on Disc, 2016.

Kaj Stenvall: An Untitled Work, Oil on Disc, 2016.

Kaj Stenvall: Swedish Style, oil on canvas, 2021.

Kaj Stenvall: Smoke without fire, oil on canvas, 2021.

Kaj Stenvall: Problems, Oil on Canvas, 2021.

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