Magnus Enckell

Magnus Enckell

Knut Magnus Enckell (born November 9, 1870 in Hamina , † November 27, 1925 in Stockholm , Sweden ) was a Finnish painter.

life and work

Magnus Enckell grew up as the youngest of six pastor's sons in the provincial town of Hamina in southeastern Finland.

Enckell was the first Finnish painter to break with naturalism , which was still a style determinant during the years of his training in Helsinki from 1889–1891. From 1891 he stayed in Paris for the first time , he was a student of Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Julian . He was mainly influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes , was interested in the then modern spiritualism and adopted the ideas of the writers of symbolism . During a stay in Brittany , he made two paintings in sparing colors, self-portrait and a Breton woman . He was enthusiastic about the Renaissance and the idealistic and mystical ideas of Sâr Péladan , from which he also drew the androgynous ideal of beauty in his works. His preferred subjects were boys and young men, in which he expressed his fascination with the male body in a multifaceted way; The male nude dominates his watercolors and drawings in particular. He painted Awakening during his second stay in Paris in 1893, increasing his style of reduced composition and transparent colors even further.

The awakening (1893)

The Faun (1914)

In 1894 and 1895 Enckell visited Milan , Florence , Ravenna , Siena and Venice . These were years of painful internal conflict, his works expressing the relationship between art and life. The years spent in Italy gave his painting more color and a more optimistic attitude. In the first years of the 20th century he developed a somewhat more colorful, more luminous painting with post- impressionist influences. An example of this is the sequence of images Das Baden . Together with Verner Thomé and Ellen Thesleff , Enckell founded the Septem group , which included painters who shared his beliefs.

Altar painting in Tampere Cathedral

In 1907 Enckell was commissioned to paint the altarpiece for the new cathedral in Tampere . The more than 10 m wide and almost 4 m high fresco shows the resurrection in reduced coloring, people of all races and nationalities rise from their graves and stride towards heaven. It is remarkable that even in a church he was able to depict two men in a central position who shake hands in order to go into new, eternal life.

In 1925 Enckell died in Stockholm and was buried in his hometown.

Web links

Commons : Magnus Enckell  - collection of images, videos and audio files