Rauha Mäkilä

Rauha Mäkilä is known for her brightly coloured paintings depicting everyday occurrences, drawing from both popular culture and the artist’s own life and family. Her works, often featuring children, reveal the profound sincerity of their subjects, and an unreserved glorification of the joy of being young. In recent years, Mäkilä has also reflected on her own position and work as an artist. Although a whole range of new types of spatial compositions have opened up in the paintings, Mäkilä’s main concern is still colour. In describing the progress of painting and her world of colour, she says: “My starting point is colour and how certain colours can support each other and build tension on the canvas. I test how I can build an interesting whole out of colours and what happens when I introduce new colours into my familiar and safe palette.”
Rauha Mäkilä (b. 1980) is a Helsinki-based artist who graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. Mäkilä’s works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Finland and internationally, including the Chart Art Fair, Copenhagen, Denmark; Gallery Susanne Pettersson, Stockholm, Sweden; the Munch Gallery, New York, US; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, US; EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland; Landskrona Museum, Landskrona, Sweden and Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden. Her works are included in several major collections, including those of the City of Gothenburg, HAM Helsinki Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Saastamoinen Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and the Niemistö Collection. Mäkilä’s latest solo exhibition at Helsinki Contemporary, DEAR, was in 2020. In 2015, Mäkilä was head of the jury for the Young Artists exhibition at Kunsthalle Helsinki.
Rauha Mäkilä’s solo show MOMO opens to the public at Aboa Vetus Ars Nova Museum tomorrow, on April 21. The exhibition presents a broad selection of the artist’s oeuvre from 2013–2023. The paintings on view at the...
Hannaleena Heiska: Untitled, 2017, oil on mdf, 130 x 120 cmRauha Mäkilä: April, 2017, acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvas, 160 x 120 cmHannaleena Heiska and Rauha Mäkilä participate in a joint exhibition with Camilla Vuorenmaa...
Rauha Mäkilä: Gerli (2013). Photo credit: Ville LöppönenThe summer exhibition Me: Self-Portraits Through Time at Kunsthalle Helsinki opens shows more than 160 self-portraits from the end of the 19th century until present day....
Heidi Lampenius, Supernatural, 2016, acrylic and ink on canvas, 190 x 170 cm. Photo: Jussi Tiainen.Landskrona Museum in Sweden presents the first exhibition that showcases six Finnish contemporary art. Sensual Knowledge exhibits works by Hannaleena...
In 2017 WSOY will be publishing a limited edition series of 12 Finnish literary classics with new covers. Each book cover will be recreated by a Finnish contemporary artist, and an exhibition displaying the original artworks will be held at Helsinki...
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri presents recent paintings by artists who were born in or who currently live and work in Finland in the group exhibition Dark Days, Bright Nights: Contemporary Paintings from Finland. This...
The second phase of the new Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection Exhibition Touch opens today at EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art. This phase called Humanity, Identity and body, presents different tools visual artists use for dealing with...
Hannaleena Heiska and Rauha Mäkilä are included in the publication Taiteilijan elämänkulku (The artist’s life course) by researchers Mikko Piispa and Mikko Salasuo. The publication is based on interviews with 29 artists from...
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