Artist tour: Petri Ala-Maunus and Marko Annala

The tour explores the meeting and collaboration between the two artists, which began when Marko Annala asked Petri Ala-Maunus to create the cover illustration for his novel Ylva. Ala-Maunus ultimately painted an impressive six-metre-wide work for the cover, The Last Will, which is currently on display in the exhibition. Blazing Sky also features nearly twenty smaller oil paintings by Ala-Maunus, which serve as the novel’s interior illustrations.

Ylva is set in 1980s Norway – the birthplace of black metal. Its two narrators are a middle-aged male artist painting his final work in a forest wilderness, and a teenage girl drawn to both metal music and the visual arts. Annala invited Petri Ala-Maunus and his own daughter Iita Annala to illustrate the book.

The tour is held in Finnish.

"The book tells the story of a frustrated, middle-aged artist working on his final painting. Annala may never have anticipated this, but I began to wonder whether I should actually paint the monumental 'last painting' described in the novel. I ended up travelling to Norway twice to study the landscapes. Now that painting truly exists: it measures over two metres in height and six metres in width, and it is on view in this exhibition." – Petri Ala-Maunus