Tove Jansson – Art, Love and Moomins

Tove Jansson – Art, Love and Moomins
Dates: June 10 – September 3, 2017
Venue: Kunstforeningen Gl Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark

The exhibition TOVE JANSSON – KUNST, KÆRLIGHED & MUMITROLDE (Tove Jansson – Art, Love and Moomins) at GL STRAND presents visual artist, illustrator and author Tove Jansson’s diverse oeuvre. It includes Tove Jansson’s early surrealist paintings from the 1930s, the modernist and experimental works from the 1940s and 50s, and her lyrical works from the 1960s and 1970s. It shows Tove Jansson’s satirical anti-war illustrations and illustrations for comics and children’s books, material that emphasises Tove Jansson’s private life, and in particular her extensive work with the Moomins, in drawings, figures and photographs.

Tove Marika Jansson (1914 – 2001)

Finish artist and lesbian Tove Jansson is famous for her children’s books about the Moomin. Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, in 1945 during World War II. She said later that the war had depressed her and that she had wanted to write something naïve and innocent. Tove was born Helsinki into a Swedish speaking family. Her parents were artistic and her siblings became artists too. She had studied art in Stockholm, Helsinki and Paris from 1930 – 1938, and she opened her first solo exhibition in Finland in 1943. In 1956 she met Ida Helmi Tuulikki Pietilä, a graphic artist who became her lifelong partner. Tuulikki Pietilä inspired Tove to create the energetic figure ‘Tooticky’ in her Moomin books. The Tampere Art Museum Moominvalley dedicated to Tove Jansson’s moomins has moved to new premises in Tampere Hall where it re-opens on June 17, 2017 as the world’s first Moomin Museum.