Fascinating article in Massimo Introvigne’s journal Bitter Winter by the maestro himself, discussing the Theosophical artist Ilona Harima. It begins:
In 2001, an exhibition at the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki “rediscovered” the Finnish artist Ilona Harima (1911–1986), whose work is yet another chapter in the long history of the relationships between art and Theosophy.
Ilona Harima, born in 1911 in Vaasa, Finland, was the daughter of Samuli Hohenthal (1879–1962) and Anna Björklund. Samuli, a successful businessman, legally changed his last name into Harima in 1936. The family’s affluence enabled Ilona to pursue art as a career. The family moved to Helsinki in early 1918 due to her father’s work. Ilona attended school there and graduated with a middle-school certificate in 1927. She then briefly studied graphic arts at the Central School of Applied Arts starting in 1928.
She never completed her formal training at the School and abandoned a promising career in advertising to devote herself to the study of esotericism and Eastern religions, and to a very personal style of painting. Ilona joined the Theosophical Society in 1936 and met there her future husband, an architect called Erkki Rautiala, whom she married in 1939.
She became so absorbed by the Theosophical Society’s activities and Eastern religions that she could only explain it with the idea that she had already encountered these doctrines in a previous life.
https://bitterwinter.org/ilona-harima-a-brilliant-finnish-theosophical-painter/.
