Tove Jansson

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  1. 01
    Biography Tove Jansson’s vibrant life
    Tove Jansson’s vibrant life
  2. 02
    Gallery Tove Jansson’s invaluable artistic treasure
    Tove Jansson’s invaluable artistic treasure
  3. 03
    Tovepedia Facts about Tove Jansson
    Facts about Tove Jansson
  4. 04
    People (Coming 2022)
    (Coming 2022)
  5. 05
    Places (Coming 2022)
    (Coming 2022)
  6. 06
    News and treasures from the archives
    and treasures from the archives
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Tove Jansson black and white portrait atelier

Biography

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Introduction

Imagine a child born in 1914 into a family living in an untroubled but cramped artist’s studio in Helsinki, Finland. Imagine an adventurous mother who left her clerical family and teaching post in Stockholm to live an illustrator’s life on the other side of the Baltic Sea. Now imagine a father, the first in his family to become an artist, who immediately started to sculpt his newborn daughter’s future.

Imagine Tove Jansson.

 

Tove Jansson’s destiny would be influenced by her parents’ unexpected life choices and the trail-blazing spirit of her time. Her mother’s illustrations and wild suffragist youth enveloped her, but she was also witness to her mother setting aside her own artistic ambitions to leave room for her father, who was a free artist, a rebellious soul, and an unquestioned authority as an artist.

Young Tove Jansson photo

Tove Jansson’s career was to span the twentieth century. Her earliest years, as a child, were shadowed by the Finnish Civil War, which erupted in the wake of the Russian Revolution. And as a young woman, she emerged from art school into the gathering clouds of the Second World War, when Finland was torn between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Tove Jansson painting photo

But in the years that follow, the gentle fantasy she conjures as an escape from the grief and devastation of war, will place her on a path to becoming a world famous artist and illustrator. She would write the eight much-loved Moomin novels and create a comic strip that would be syndicated in newspapers across the world. Tove Jansson would also paint, write short stories and novels, compose song lyrics, design stage scenes, and reply to every letter from readers that she received. She would make lifelong friends and colleagues and in her thirties find a partner for life.

Tove Jansson portrait artist

Tove Jansson was an artist at heart; she made her first illustrations at the same time as she made her first steps. In her adult life, ‘Work and Love’(labora et amare) became her motto, and the words she proclaimed when she designed her own ex libris.

 

 

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read more about her life.

Tove Jansson smiling
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Articles

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Life in an artist’s studio

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The artist who composes her life

Tove Jansson author

The attuned author

Tove Jansson Mumin_erovrar_varlden

The Moomins take on the world

Tove Jansson Little Toffle

Once there was a little toffle

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The joyous labour

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An island for the free and lonely

Tove Jansson boat Helsinki archipelago

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