„The Free Art School has been of utmost importance in Finnish art in that it has extended knowledge of international tendencies and presented them to the Finnish audience. Among these tendencies are French colour painting, European abstract painting of the 1950s and 60s and the precisely articulated American colour field painting."

Carolus Enckell, painter, former Rector of the Free Art School

"The artist Reijo Viljanen is an important representative of the above-mentioned principles of painting. He also held the post of the Rector of the school for many years. His paintings surprise the viewer with colourful purity and intensity. An impression is made which is on the interface between abstract and landscape painting. I write landscape paintings because the viewer is unconsciously looking for a close fit, a context as the key to understand the meaning of the painting. At first glance, Viljanen's paintings may give an impression of landscapes but layers of painting, the brush strokes, the palette knife traces, the overlap of the colour deposition that unfolds in space and continues in the endless flow of painting reveal with closer observation. The paintings seem to be full of emotional expression as well as systematic will to control colour harmony. Painting thus conceals the symbolism of the colour itself, which is not dependent on the content context of the image.
It is precisely this conscious contradiction between painting which has its own significance and the possible context, which gives the paintings of Reijo Viljanen an atmosphere of artistic achievement and creates in the viewer the impression of a new reality.

Petr Řehoř / Curator