On Wednesday, 1 February at 5.30pm, we will, in the presence of the artist, launch the book Sinikka Kurkinen, published by Kohta in collaboration with the Helsinki-based art publisher Parus Verus.

This new book is the first comprehensive printed presentation of Sinikka Kurkinen’s remarkable career in painting. It contains an essay by Anders Kreuger, Kohta’s director who curated her retrospective last autumn, along with colour reproductions of nearly 100 paintings from 1969 to 2022. The essay is published in English and in Finnish translation by Teo Aiha. Kurkinen’s paintings were photographed for the book by Jussi Tiainen.

As the back cover blurb states:

‘Sinikka Kurkinen (1935) is probably the most significant Finnish artist you haven’t yet heard of. She is a forceful image-thinker, a bold but also subtle colorist. Already in 1968, the critic Veli-Pekka Mattila called her “a colour painter in the grand style”.’

Kurkinen’s ‘Cloud and Example’ last autumn was one of the most visited and talked-about exhibitions at Kohta since we started our activities in 2017. It was the first time since 2007 that Helsinki audiences could see work by the Imatra-based painter, and the first retrospective exhibition fully based on works in her own possession.

Works from the exhibition are now in the collections of, among others, Ateneum, the Heino Foundation, the Saastamoinen Foundation and the Jenni and Antti Wihuri Foundation in Helsinki as well as the AKO Art Foundation in Kristiansand, Norway. Collectors who want to acquire works by Kurkinen may still do so from Kohta.