Antti Favén

Antti Favén kept a tiny studio above a Helsinki bakery, where the smell of fresh rye bread mixed with turpentine. He loved painting market days—fishmongers shouting, sacks of grain piled high—long before anyone called it “folk art.” Skip the big halls; go straight to *Torikauppaa Rautatientorilla* at Ateneum. It’s a crowded square in pencil and ink, where a woman in a red shawl balances a basket on her head and a man in a cap counts change. The lines are quick and sure, like a snapshot caught on the move.