2023-08-14 22:22:11
The artist Tove Jansson (1914-2001) is one of the most recognized of the 20th century, but it is in her country of birth, Finland, where her figure arouses the greatest enthusiasm. She is a painter, muralist and writer —among other creative occupations—, however, she is remembered for being the creator of the Moomin, creatures whose adventures aimed at children are known worldwide. In recent years, when more than a hundred years have passed since her birth, her work and her unique personality are arousing a lot of interest.
Five recommendations for a new children’s comic that transmits values without preaching
Further
Tove Jansson was born into a family of artists: her father was the sculptor Viktor Bernhard Jansson, while her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was a designer and illustrator. His two younger brothers, Per Olov and Lars Jansson, also did similar work: the former was a renowned photographer, while Lars followed in his sister’s footsteps and became a cartoonist. Raised in a liberal and creative environment, the young Tove showed artistic inclinations, stimulated by her parents, and when she grew up she would study at different centers: the Higher School of Art, Crafts and Design in Stockholm or the School of Fine Arts in Paris, among others. they. She was a precocious artist, who was already participating in exhibitions before she was 20 years old, and she had her first solo show in 1943. Her marked leftist ideology can be appreciated from her youth, when she worked for the satirical magazine Length as an illustrator and cover artist: a caricature of him of Hitler published in one of its issues, in the midst of World War II, it became very popular.
As a painter, Jansson evolved from a quality post-impressionism, but somewhat outdated in the 40s, to the rupturist abstraction of her latest works. Of her paintings from her first period, her self-portraits stand out, enigmatic and of great psychological depth. Her plastic work can still be seen today in several of the murals she made in Helsinki, her hometown, for both public buildings and private businesses. But it will be the Moomins that bring her her first successes as a writer: created as a kind of restorative balm against the destruction of war during 1945, these kind and well-meaning trolls were first born as the protagonists of several children’s books illustrated by Jansson herself. . The second of them comet arrival (1946), achieved quite an impact and was later adapted into a play directed by Vivica Bandler, a woman who had a strong influence on the life of Tove Jansson.
Converted into a newspaper strip aimed at all audiences from 1953, on the pages of the Evening News, it is from then on when Jansson’s creation begins to gain worldwide fame, with its publication in more and more newspapers. The artist dealt with a daily strip, in which she developed stories of varying length, until she decided to leave it in 1959, from which time her brother Lars would take care of her, who had already developed assistant work. Despite the fact that Tove Larsson has barely returned to her characters since the 1970s, the Moomins have been exploited in all kinds of ways. merchandising and have been adapted numerous times for television, for example in a series of anime Japanese produced by Zuiyo Enterprise (1969-1970) or in the best known of its animated incarnations, Moomin (1990-1992), a highly successful Japanese, Dutch and Finnish production, supervised by Lars Jansson himself. The characters even have their own theme park in Finland, Moomin World.
An LGTBI+ icon
The figure of Tove Jansson is also inspiring due to aspects of her personal life, mainly due to the freedom with which she lived her sexuality. the recent biopic cinematic Tove (2020), directed by Zaida Bergroth, focuses on this question, presenting a thirty-year-old Jansson, played by actress Alma Pöysti, at the point where her career is about to take off, in the throes of World War II. World. In 1945, and in the midst of the post-war euphoria and the bohemian and artistic atmospheres of Helsinki and Paris, Jansson began a relationship with a married parliamentarian, but soon after he met the theater director Vivica Bandler, who would become his first lover. female. The film naturally shows how Jansson develops a free affective life and rejects marriage, but, nevertheless, she cannot accept that Bandler does not reciprocate her feelings with the same intensity. The story ends in the 50s, when the artist has already achieved success with the daily strip of Moomin and he meets the one who will be the love of his life, the artist Tuulikki Pietilä, with whom he lived until his death.
Jansson declared on several occasions that she could not be considered fully lesbian, since she continued to have relationships with men, at a time when the concept of bisexuality was not so widespread. Her relationship with Pietilä, however, was never hidden by the artist, and her public appearances as a couple, in a country where homosexuality was not decriminalized until 1971, were important to make it visible, although Jansson was never a activist. Although she always defended freedom in all aspects of life, including affective and sexual, regardless of social conventions or prejudices of the time. The movie Tove It reflects well his personal development in this sense, which can be considered pioneering, which is why it continues to be totally relevant today.
The world of the Moomin
In the aforementioned feature film, space is also dedicated to the artistic creations of Jansson, who appears on many occasions working in his studio in Helsinki. Although she is shown as a frustrated artist who initially despised her caricatures and drawings and, at the behest of her father, longed to succeed as a painter, what is certain is that she fully realized her childhood work around the Moomin, with whom she was able to reflect his vision of life. Especially in the press strips, where she also reached an adult audience, and which she is currently recovering from the Salamandra Graphic publishing house in Spanish. With three volumes published to date under the title of Moomin. The complete strips (with translation by Esther Cruz Santaella), the series makes the stories of these characters available to the Spanish public, published in chronological order. The main family, consisting of Moomin, his partner, Miss Snork, and Papa and Mama Moomin, live in a peaceful valley full of strange characters, sometimes based on rich Finnish folklore, other times, translations of family and friends: the wicked Pestosi, the greedy Sniff, the thoughtful Snufkin or the upright Valley Police Chief. The adventures of the Moomin revolve around universal values, such as love and friendship, and reflect Tove Jansson’s fondness for a simple life, far from modernity and attached to the earth. The Moomin enjoy life, cultivating the land and developing crazy projects that are the result of their ingenuity, and they face problems with a mixture of candidness and a basic sense of justice. But, above all, with great empathy.
However, under the deceptively inane appearance of her adorable creatures, Tove Jansson has always slipped subtle criticisms of the modern world and capitalism. For example in Moomin on the Côte d’Azur the family’s adventures are narrated during a vacation in a hotel, where they allow themselves to be corrupted by superfluous luxury and greed before recovering the sanity of their essential values. In Moomin begins a new life, the figure of a prophet allows veiled criticism of organized religions to slip, while in The valley of the Moomin turns into a jungle a clearly ecological message is delivered. For all these reasons, the Moomin strips are today not just a fun read, but a set of stories with fully current progressive values, which celebrate difference, self-acceptance and the basic values of coexistence. Jansson captured in them not only his playful vision, but also part of his biography: it’s not hard to glimpse aspects of his relationship with Vivica Bandler in the love affairs of Moomin and Miss Snork, for example. But above all in Moomin his love for rural and retired life is observed, which Jansson practiced together with his partner in long stays in a house on the island of Klovharu, documented in films shot by Pietilä herself.
For all these reasons, the work of Tove Jansson, recognized with numerous awards, including the Finnish Arts Award (1993) or the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award (1966), has remained for posterity as a living work, whose reading today is as necessary as in its original time.
#creator #Moomin #bisexual #cartoonist #Finland #homosexuality #crime