Marika Mäkelä b. 1947

Born in Oulu, Finland  I Lives and works in Helsinki

In a career spanning six decades, Marika Mäkelä has established herself as an unflinchingly bold and continually surprising painter. Her radically evolving technique bears witness to her daring spirit of creative renewal: she has taken up woodworking tools alongside her paintbrush and replaced canvas with heavy wooden panels. Her works push boundaries, compelling us to reflect on the boundary between painting and sculpture. Typically, for Mäkelä, her brushwork is imbued with intensity, deriving its vitality from the synergy ignited between the buoyant visual vocabulary and the heaviness of the wood. Yet two elements always lie at the heart of her paintings: light and form – their observation and dissection.

Marika Mäkelä’s artistic breakthrough came during the Neo-Expressionist wave of the 1980s. She is known for her vivid and nuanced use of colour, and for works built up through thick, layered applications of paint and almost three-dimensional brushwork. She was awarded the State Art Committee’s State Prize in 1974 and the Finnish Cultural Fund Prize in 1994. Her work has been exhibited widely in Finland and internationally, including in Stockholm, Paris, Cologne, and Copenhagen. In 2024, she was awarded the honorary title of Professor by the President of Finland. 

Galerie Forsblom has been representing Marika Mäkelä since 2018.