Annu Vertanen

Annu Vertanen is one of Finland's most internationally renowned printmakers, recognized as a pioneer who has expanded the expression of printmaking and integrated it with other forms of contemporary art. Born in 1960, she has held the position of Professor and Head of Printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki since 2016 -- Finland's only professorship in the discipline.

Vertanen's preferred technique is woodcut, and she is a master of traditional Japanese water-based woodcut, or mokuhanga. Layering is central to her process: she combines multiple thin printing papers or overlapping print layers on paper to create works of remarkable depth and luminosity, an approach in which overlapping translucent fields of colour and light, rather than hard outlines, define the image.

Though Vertanen studied painting initially, she became increasingly drawn to printmaking -- first as a means to translate her distinctive color sensibility from her canvases, and then as an autonomous art form with its own expressive possibilities. Over her long career, she has moved beyond conventional printmaking to encompass watercolor paintings, video, and sculpture, always maintaining the layered, graphic sensibility that characterizes her printed work.

Her Cellular Matrix exhibition at the Jyvaskyla Art Museum showcased the full breadth of her career, featuring prints alongside works in other media. The exhibition demonstrated how her investigation of overlapping, translucent layers extends across disciplines, whether she is working with ink on paper, moving images, or three-dimensional forms.

Vertanen's work is held in major international collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the University of Alberta Museum in Canada, the Ohio University Print Collection, the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Amells Art Collection in Sweden, and the Norwegian Directorate for Education. She has participated in the Global Print Biennial and numerous international exhibitions, and is listed on the Mokuhanga Magic Mokumap directory and featured in Mokublad, the mokuhanga publication associated with Mokuhanga Magic.