Eduardo Chillida's exhibition at Galerie Forsblom in 1989.
Galerie Forsblom celebrates its 40th anniversary on November 17, 2017. The gallery has had many homes: on Helsinki’s Bulevardi, Yrjönkatu and the North Esplanade, with satellite galleries as far afield as Zurich in Switzerland and Caracas in Venezuela. It has occupied its current location on the corner of Yrjönkatu 22 and Lönnrotinkatu 5 since 2011. To mark its anniversary year, Galerie Forsblom opened a new gallery on Stockholm’s Karlavägen in February 2017.
The Helsinki gallery was opened with an exhibition featuring Jim Dine in 1983. In the late 1980s, Forsblom brought a line-up of Pop Art pioneers to Finland: Robert Rauschenberg exhibited his paintings in 1987, and in 1988 the gallery hosted a group exhibition of artists represented by the legendary gallerist Leo Castelli, including paintings, sculptures and works on paper by top names such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol.
The line-up of artists featured at the gallery has expanded over the years. The list has included names such as Eduardo Chillida, Jannis Kounellis, Antoni Tàpies, Bernar Venet, Julian Schnabel and Peter Halley. Recently Galerie Forsblom has been proud to present the work of Secundino Hernández, Tony Oursler, Jason Martin, Chantal Joffe and Ai Weiwei.
The gallery has worked with a number of artists over a period of decades, spurring a variety of spin-off projects. A good example is Jacob Hashimoto’s exhibition at the Wäinö Aaltonen Art Museum in Turku last summer. Galerie Forsblom has also worked hard to raise the visibility of Finnish art by participating actively in a number of international art fairs every year.