Matti Rag Paananen 10.10.2025–22.3.2026
25.9.2025
Matti Rag Paananen
10.10.2025–22.3.2026
Ars Nova, 2nd floor
The Great Art persistently inspired Paananen, driving him to create in a multidisciplinary and open-minded manner. He was a composer, arranger, pianist, poet and painter. This exhibition is Paananen’s museum debut.
I would have hoped to see the dawn of my art. Now, in the night of my coffin, I find no switch.
Yet perhaps someday someone will turn on the light of my art, and turn my coffin into a palace. – Matti Rag Paananen
Finish your painting quickly. Life is short. – Matti Rag Paananen
The astonishingly productive artistic genius, Matti Rag Paananen (1939–2022), began painting in 1978. His visual work encompasses approximately 700 paintings. The majority of Paananen’s paintings are still housed in Ragala, Paananen’s home in Hirvensalo, Turku, where he lived most of his life. Ragala is a work of art in its own right and the birthplace of his art.
Paananen was a self-taught artist, known for his distinctive and original style. He is remembered as an eccentric with a vivid imagination and disciplined work ethic. Paananen was deeply familiar with Western painting and held a special admiration for early Parisian Modernism (Picasso, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh).
Almost all of his paintings have decorative, recycled frames. He painted in acrylic on hardboard panels, each custom-made to fit these frames. In his relief-like works, he used acrylic modelling paste. He often attached polished stones, glass beads, banknotes and coins, postal stamps, and fragments of text to his works.
His paintings took their subjects from music, travel and contemporary events. His most abstract paintings were inspired by jazz, and many include musical notations, the artist’s form of speech. Often, a musical composition or a poem would also become a painting.
Paananen’s travels to East Africa (1990, 1991 and 1996), South America (1987 and 2005), Grenada (1994–1995) and Paris (1999, 2004, 2006 and 2007) were a significant source of inspiration for his art. When living on the lands of the Maasai people in Kenya and Tanzania, Paananen wrote poems and painted many travel-sized paintings. While in the Amazon rainforest, he composed a symphony, which was later complemented by a series of landscape paintings.
Paananen’s Paris-themed paintings, numbering almost one hundred, constitute a substantial segment of his total production. They depict Parisian squares and the most famous buildings of the city. He painted multiple versions of the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, each progressively more expressive in style.
Paananen also painted numerous self-portraits in a variety of sizes and styles, ranging from Naturalism to Naïve art, at times rendered in a style evocative of portraits of saints. In numerous Parisian milieu portraits, Paananen included himself within the composition, sometimes appearing a dozen times in different personas.
In his final years, Paananen drew the subjects of his paintings from contemporary world events and news headlines. Even in the 2020s, during the last two years of his life, he recorded major events in his paintings, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the fire at Notre-Dame.
Matti Rag Paananen (1939–2022) was a multidisciplinary artist: musician, composer, poet and visual artist.
He began his musical career as a restaurant pianist in the 1960s. As a jazz pianist, he collaborated with various well-known artists, including Paroni Paakkunainen, Ilja Saastamoinen and Vesa-Matti Loiri. His second official name is Rag, inspired by his admiration for ragtime music and Scott Joplin ever since he was young.
Paananen composed seven symphonies and several dozen albums. Consisting of 1001 parts, his most important work is titled Tuhannen ja yhden yön laulut [Songs of One Thousand and One Nights] (1977–1993). He earned a mention in the Guinness Book of Records by creating the longest musical composition in the world. The piece, Vuoden päivät [Days of the Year] (1964–1970), comprises 366 parts and takes approximately 42 hours to play on the piano. His other noteworthy creations include, among others, Horoscope (1972) and Amazon (1989).
As a poet, Paananen wrote a ten-part collection of aphorisms, Taide ja nerous [Art and Genius] (2010–2015), comprising over 3000 pages of insightful reflections on art. In addition, he recorded his thoughts on art in Taiteen käsikirja eli Varjojen loisteessa [A Handbook on Art, or in the Glow of Shadows] (1996) and published two poetry books. Prinsessan testamentti [Princess’s Legacy] (1988) is a musical and poetic work dedicated to the suffering and loss of those affected by drugs. Combining poetry and photography, Savanni – runollinen kertomus Itä-Afrikasta [Savannah: a poetic story about East Africa] (2008) is a compilation of his travel experiences. In addition, Paananen published sheet music and composed music for films and documentaries.
Paananen received Turku City’s art award in 1985 and the state artist pension in 2009.
Paananen’s visual artworks have rarely been exhibited appearing at venues such as the Valmet shipyard (1983) and Turku Cultural Centre (1992). The artist’s home, Ragala, was open to the public one day a month for several years.
In 2024, Paananen’s visual art was finally shown on a larger scale, with an extensive memorial exhibition in his honour at the Manilla Culture Factory and the Temppeleitä Pariisissa [Temples in Paris] exhibition at St. Henry’s Ecumenical Art Chapel in Turku. Both of these exhibitions were curated by the artist Anu Tuomi.
The recent interest in Paananen’s art stems from the active efforts of the cultural association Riskiryhmä ry. In summer 2024, Riskiryhmä staged a series of theatrical performances, Taide pitkä, elämä pätkä [Art is long, life is a stub] at Ragala. At the group’s initiative, Aboa Vetus Ars Nova presents an extensive retrospective and the first museum exhibition of Matti Rag Paananen’s art.
More information
Niina Tanskanen
curator
niina.tanskanen@avan.fi
040 585 44 99
