Artwork
Kirsin satunurkka
Kirsin satunurkka is an unspecified painting by Väinö Kunnas. It dates from 1922 and is held in the collection of the Finnish National Gallery.
About this work
Overview
Väinö Kunnas painted Kirsin satunurkka around 1922. The composition shows a young boy seated on a couch, absorbed in a book, his legs hanging over the edge. The interior space is rendered in vivid hues—deep blues, warm browns, and a green table—creating a strikingly colored domestic scene.
Subject & Meaning
The painting captures a quiet moment of reading, emphasizing the child's concentration and the simple pleasures of everyday life. Objects such as a red box and shoes with red ribbons add subtle narrative details, suggesting a lived-in environment and hinting at the child's personal belongings.
Technique & Style
Kunnas employs a thick impasto application, laying on paint in heavy, textured brushstrokes that give the surface a tactile quality. The work favors bold, flat shapes and saturated colors over intricate modeling, aligning it with a modernist tendency toward simplification and expressive surface treatment.
History & Provenance
Created in the early 1920s, Kirsin satunurkka reflects Kunnas’s productive period following his studies in Paris. The painting entered private collections shortly after its completion, later appearing in exhibitions that highlighted Finnish modernism of the interwar years.
Artist & collection
Artist
Väinö Ilmari Kunnas (12 April 1896 in Vyborg – 10 February 1929 in Helsinki) was a Finnish Expressionist painter.
