Kalervo Palsa

In 2013, his house was converted into the Palsa Museum, dedicated to his work.

• Name — Kalervo Palsa • Birthplace — Kittilä, Finland • Place of death — Kittilä, Finland • Occupation — Artist

Palsa was a native of Kittilä in Lapland. As a child, he grew up in a dysfunctional household where display of emotion was discouraged. Palsa began keeping a journal in which he recorded his thoughts in the early 1960s. His work was first exhibited in Rovaniemi in 1967, and he became the first member of his family to graduate high school in 1970. He spent time in the 1970s as an art student in Helsinki, but resided permanently at a small studio cabin in Kittilä. It was connected to electricity by a long extension cable from a nearby house, and Palsa called it his "Getsemane" after the biblical site, or sometimes his "castle in the clouds". Palsa died in 1987, lying in bed at home alone with pneumonia.

• Illustration — Kalervo Palsa Museum Kalervo Palsa used a varied palette of techniques and materials, including housepaint. He painted over 1,000 self-portraits. Most of his works explore in graphic detail the dark side of humanity, and especially of his native northern regions, with prominent themes including grotesque sexuality, sadism, homosexuality, bisexuality and a general emotional frigidity paraphilia. Palsa went through a brief phase of experimentation with abstract art while staying in New York City. According to his diaries, this phase ended suddenly one day when he saw an unconscious black man sprawled on a subway bench. • Illustration — Kalervo Palsa gravestone Besides Hieronymus Bosch, his work has been compared to that of Frida Kahlo. His artistic influences include René Magritte and Vincent van Gogh, and his works also include references to Jean-Paul Sartre, August Strindberg and Jean Genet. On the first page of Eläkeläinen muistelee, he mentions other looser influences such as Jonathan Swift and Vladimir Lenin, among others. Some researchers have noted that though he remained active in his work up to his death in 1987, his work did not show signs of the postmodernism evident in the work of many other artists of the time.

• Illustration — Artist's studio • Turva ("Security") is a painting of a giant anus surrounded by horrifying images. At the center of the painting the anus opens as a window showing a man seated serenely in a rocking chair, apparently untouched by the horrors. • Missi Paskantaa ("A Beauty Pageant Contestant Takes a Dump"), a black-and-white inked comic strip. The work consists of a few pages of deadpan illustrated technical description of the practical ramifications of beauty pageant contestants having to defecate, and finally ends with an illustrated listing of varieties of consistency of faeces that might come out of such a girl's anus, with attendant analysis. • Eläkeläinen Muistelee ("Retiree Reminisces"), a black-and-white inked comic-book recounting a plethora of highly surreal homosexual sadistic tales. • Miehen Kuukautiset ("The Male Period"), a painting of a man's bleeding anus. • Vapautuminen ("Deliverance"), a painting of a man suspended in mid-air, hung by a rope attached around the glans of his own huge penis. • Uusi Ihminen ("New (Hu)Man"), a man giving birth through his anal opening.