REIDAR SÄRESTÖNIEMI. “Tundrans klokker”, signed and dated -71, oil on canvas.

140 x 140cm, 144 x 144cm.
Reidar Särestöniemi (1925–1981) was an artist whose work was deeply inspired by the Arctic nature of his northern homeland, where he lived and worked. His breakthrough as an artist came in the late 1950s and early 1960s. After studying art in Helsinki and Leningrad, he held his first successful exhibitions, which brought him financial success and enabled him to withdraw from the Helsinki art scene and return to his home region.
For most of his artistic career, Särestöniemi lived and worked on his family estate in Särestö, in the village of Kaukonen in Kittilä. The estate, located by the Ounasjoki River, had long been isolated and nearly self-sufficient. Särestöniemi had very little contact with the outside world until he started school. Growing up alone with his family and their livestock, he developed an interest in geography and history. As an adult, his love for distant places alternated with his longing for home. He despised the winter darkness and often travelled abroad, but his yearning for home always brought him back to Särestö by spring when the ice began to melt.
As Särestöniemi’s popularity grew and the value of his works increased, more and more people visited Särestö, which at times he found stressful. By the mid-1960s, his financial success allowed him to build an atelier house in Särestö, called Honkapirtti. Due to the increasing number of visitors and his need for solitude, he built a separate gallery building in 1972, where more guests could view his art without disturbing his work.
Särestöniemi’s artistic production revolved around various themes, with environmental conservation being one of the most prominent in the 1970s. Other key themes from this period included a series of self-portraits and an imaginative depiction of the Trifon Monastery, both rooted in introspection. The series about Trifon Monastery, blending ancient history and fantasy, emerged during some of Särestöniemi’s busiest years when he experienced deep loneliness despite being surrounded by people. He was fascinated by the story of the medieval Trifon Monastery on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, which was brutally destroyed. In his paintings, the monastery symbolized a spiritual refuge, much like his own atelier home. Just as the Trifon Monastery had been threatened, so too was Särestöniemi’s own sanctuary.
Depicted in the style of Orthodox church architecture, the Trifon Monastery in Särestöniemi’s paintings almost always appears with the feet of a tattered man beneath it. The animals in his symbolically rich paintings represent not only northern nature but also the artist himself. Särestöniemi strongly identified with the fox, which symbolized his sensitive and vulnerable side.
With increasing public recognition and after being appointed professor in 1974, Särestöniemi began receiving more distinguished visitors. One of his most well-known admirers and friends was President Urho Kekkonen. The monastery-themed artwork now for sale was created in the 1970s with the support of Kekkonen, who may have purchased the piece directly from the artist. The painting, titled Bells of the Tundra, was displayed in the conference room of Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags AB before eventually being transferred to its current owner in a private Swedish collection.