Kullervo Sets off for Battle

Akseli Gallen-Kallela's 'Kullervo Sets off for Battle' (1901) is from his sustained engagement with the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala — the tragic figure of Kullervo (the cursed hero who unknowingly commits incest with his sister and eventually dies by suicide) was central to his artistic project of giving visual form to Finland's mythological heritage. Gallen-Kallela's Kalevala paintings were defining works of Finnish national identity in the critical years around Finland's declaration of independence (1917), and his treatment of Kullervo's tragedy captured both the epic's darkness and the specific quality of the Finnish mythological world.

Gallen-Kallela renders Kullervo's departure for battle with the bold, simplified forms and flat color areas that characterized his Kalevala series — the hero's figure given the archetypal quality of myth rather than the individuality of genre portraiture. His characteristic technique for these works combines decorative flatness (influenced by his study of Art Nouveau and Japanese prints) with a quality of elemental force appropriate to the epic subject. The Finnish landscape provides the mythological subject's natural setting.