We are pleased to announce an exhibition with new paintings by the Finnish artist Paul Osipow (b. 1939). This is his 12th solo exhibition with the gallery, since the first in 1989.

Over the last two decades, figures and objects – like nudes, fragments of ancient ruins, skulls and various foods – have been among his favorite subjects for painterly exploration. However, for the greater part of his career, Osipow has focused on non-figurative painting of which he has been a leading protagonist within the Nordic art scene.

The exhibition Ciao Carlo presents a series of small abstract paintings from 2022, which Osipow painted during the latest of his many winter residencies in the Italian village of Grassina.

Executed with oil paint on small canvases measuring from 18 × 24 cm to 20 × 30 cm, these paintings demonstrate Osipow’s mastery of simple gestures and mark making, lending grandeur to the diminutive formats. The paint is applied with distinct sensuous strokes, with a brush or carefully sculpted with a palette knife, predominantly in vivid primary colors and the occasional black, ochre or brown. The results are striking compositions, simultaneously intimate and monumental, regardless of scale.

In 2005, Osipow was featured in a major exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Kunsthalle Helsinki also held a retrospective exhibition with a coinciding publication in 2018. Osipow is represented in private and public collections throughout the Nordic region, including the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the National Museum in Oslo and the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.