The Metropolitan Museum of Art Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck

Pick up an art book from The Met's museum store. By Dita Amory With contributions by Patricia G. Berman, Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, Zoe de Bretagne, Silvia A. Centeno, Charlotte Hale, Max Hollein, and Elizabeth Peyton Reevaluating the role of Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) in the history of modernism, this publication highlights pivotal passages in her sixtyyear career-from her training at the Finnish Art Society and remarkable early success to her studies in Paris and St. Ives and eventual return to Finland. There, in relative isolation, she pared down figure paintings and still lifes to near abstraction while introducing greater complexity in her canvases. Long celebrated in Finland and Sweden, Schjerfbeck is relatively unknown to the rest of the world. This book provides fresh insight into her idiosyncratic processes and discusses the series of haunting self-portraits that she painted in her final years, which stand among the twentieth century's most extraordinary selfexaminations. Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck introduces an extraordinary Nordic artist who realized her own unique vision with passionate determination, despite personal adversity and her homeland's Dita Amory is Robert Lehman Curator in Charge of the Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. turbulent political history.