Small Lilies 1942

Curator: Standing before us is Helene Schjerfbeck's "Small Lilies," a pastel drawing on paper created in 1942. Editor: There's an immediate stillness to it, isn't there? The muted palette and sparse composition create a sense of quiet contemplation. It's deceptively simple. Curator: Indeed. Considering Schjerfbeck’s life during wartime Finland, we see the socio-political milieu subtly shaping her stylistic choices. These are not lavish lilies bursting with life; rather, they possess a restrained, almost austere beauty reflecting resource scarcity and national anxieties. Editor: The colour choices strike me too. Lilies often symbolize purity, death and resurrection. I'm struck by the three colours used for these: A blood red one and another drained almost entirely of colour with one more with muted pale hues. Could it also represent hope or perhaps survival? Curator: Precisely! Think of how the image engages with ongoing conversations about aging, loss, and resilience in the face of adversity. It is as if Schjerfbeck's earlier stylistic innovations, in starkly flattened forms, speaks of larger philosophical reflections regarding nationhood during wartime and women's bodies as repositories of communal trauma. Editor: I see what you mean. The grey background, like the paper is also left almost bare - only loosely sketched which allows one to ponder these themes as well as others such as femininity as being ever more complicated during conflict filled with grief, sorrow, and longing... Curator: It really compels the viewer to recognize art’s intersectional relation with politics—that is, what can artistic creations communicate or hide about larger power structures at specific moments of social change and historical crises? Editor: It is interesting how these simple forms have these multiple meanings or become metaphors or vehicles of sorts… They become archetypes perhaps allowing greater understanding or opening oneself up towards multiple interpretations regardless who we are or where our backgrounds may stem! Curator: Exactly, even as Schjerfbeck abstracts these flowers down to their bare essence, her artistic choices invite profound questions about existence in those precarious and ever-changing social contexts. Editor: It just illustrates so poignantly the emotional resilience imbedded deep down underneath apparent simplicity—or rather deceptively simple surfaces, where more complexity and ambiguity intertwines itself within seemingly clear meanings.