Bailey Trela at Commonweal:
The best works by the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck leave you convinced they might vanish from one moment to the next, just as a dream seems to grow sharper right before it ends. For all their winking tints and sinuous linework, the dominant mood is one of bittersweet calm, reminding us that fugacity, when it recurs often enough, eventually achieves a sort of permanence. Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 5, is a fittingly relaxed introduction to the artist, revealing Schjerfbeck’s discreet mastery, one cleverly understated canvas at a time.
Born in the summer of 1862 to Olga Johanna Printz and Svante Schjerfbeck, an office manager for the local railway, Schjerfbeck would spend much of her life at a remove from the Finnish metropole of Helsinki. Standard biographical treatments suggest that this isolation exacerbated Schjerfbeck’s depressive tendencies, and that together these help explain the painful sense of solitude that often imbues her canvases. In fact, though it would be wrong to downplay the role of physical and mental debility in Schjerfbeck’s life and career, the major note might just as well be struck by her sustained industry and series of deep and artistically nourishing friendships.
more here.
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