THE GRANARY

Since 1985, the natural‑stone granary that has served as the primary exhibition space is the soul of the sculpture park — a memory reaching back across decades.

Pullinen dedicated a space for art also in Nissbacka’s old grain storehouse. This magnificent stone granary continues, as it has for 40 years, to provide an exhibition space for the museum’s core collection. The Granary presents Pullinen’s art from the 1950s all the way to the 2000s.

The natural‑stone granary, dating from 1924, is the soul of the sculpture park — its memory stretching back through decades and symbolising the cherished heritage of historic Nissbacka. The first exhibition, Ahdistus (“Anguish”), was held in the granary in 1985. Its title referred to the fear of Nissbacka’s destruction and loss, as well as Pullinen’s view of a present age blind to history and beauty. For years, the estate lived under the threat of rezoning, as new residential buildings were planned for the area. Pullinen and her husband, Carl‑Magnus Ramsay, succeeded in protecting the site and saving it from destructive development. When the massive and striking farm building was converted into an exhibition space in the 1980s, only very minimal alterations were made. Wooden‑shuttered ventilation openings received glass panes, and the intermediate floors were opened to allow more natural light.

After the site became a museum, the permanent collection exhibition has continued to be displayed in the Granary. Its installation offers an overview of Pullinen’s extensive body of work, including pieces from her student years in the 1950s onward. The earliest sculptures date from the period when Pullinen studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts, located in the Ateneum in Helsinki. Works from the 1950s–60s reveal her evolving exploration of materials — tree stumps, scrap metal, travertine, and her early shell‑like bronze castings — and the development of her formal language and material choices.

Her studies deepened in Italy, where Pullinen had a studio at Villa Lante in Rome. The works of the 1960s carry clear marks of antiquity, both in material choices and in the myth‑evoking titles that hint at their narrative background.

The Granaryi exhibition is built around three rarities: the versions Pullinen cast as archive pieces of her three major works from the 1970s — Jeanne D’Arctic, Hengen Peili (“Mirror of the Spirit”), and Arktinen Afrodite (“Arctic Aphrodite”), the latter of which is also displayed as a smaller variant and as a dark‑patinated “black” version. The pieces featuring broadly polished bronze surfaces are best understood as indoor sculptures, as are the early stone‑and‑bronze combinations of the 1960s, executed in marble and travertine.

The Makasiini also presents a selection of Pullinen’s figurative portraits depicting family members and collaborators from over the years. These portrait works express Pullinen’s interest in conveying a subject’s inner character visually — aiming to capture essence rather than outward appearance.

A third major section consists of scale models representing earth‑reliefs created elsewhere or unrealised monumental works. On display in the Makasiini are the miniature versions of the Yrjö Kallinen memorial Valaistuksen tie (“The Path of Enlightenment”, 1989, Oulu), Muusa (1988, Tampere), and Itämeren tytär (“Daughter of the Baltic Sea”, 1971–90, Helsinki).