Aalto, Alvar

Aalto, Alvar (b Kuortane, 3 Feb. 1898; d Helsinki, 11 May 1976).
Finnish architect, designer, sculptor, and painter. One of the outstanding architects of the 20th century, he was also an important furniture designer and a talented abstract sculptor and painter. Appropriately for an artist from a land of forests, he made extensive use of timber in his work, and in 1933 he patented a method of bending plywood for furniture. In the 1930s he engaged in what have been described as artistic laboratory experiments, using laminated wood to make abstract reliefs and free-standing sculptures, characterized by irregularly curved forms. These sculptural experiments served the dual purpose of solving technical problems concerning the pliancy of wood and of developing spatial ideas for his architectural work. In the 1950s he took up sculpture on a large scale, working in bronze, marble, and mixed media. His outstanding work in this field is his memorial (1960) for the Battle of Suomussalmi, a leaning bronze pillar on a stone pedestal set up in the arctic wastes of the battlefield. Aalto was noteworthy also for helping to introduce modern art to the Finnish public, particularly the works of his friends Calder and Léger.