Teemu Saukkonen made his breakthrough as a visual artist in the early 1980s when studying man and powerful expressive painting as a means of communication. While the models were originally acquaintances and the artist in person, the figure of man subsequently evolved to be nameless, ageless and devoid of gender, as man became a means for Saukkonen to depict the entire human condition. This placed life before art, leaving the artist and his images to serve as the humble servants of life itself. While retaining a powerful materiality and physicality, his paintings in the 1990s followed general artistic trends, with an increase in conceptual elements as a living surface texture and rich patterning became key means of expressi...