Tracing the origins of Finnish art education movement with teacher Lilli Törnudd

Authors

• Alma Muukka-Marjovuo Sibelius-lukio/ Aalto-yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.69803

Keywords:

taidekasvatuksen historia, koulun taidekasvatus ennen ja nyt, taiteita yhdistävä taidekasvatus

Abstract

This article examines how the ideas of the international art education movement arrived to Finland linking them with Lilli Törnudd’s life and her art education thinking. Törnudd (1862-1929) was an important contributer in the Finnish art education movement. Writing in Finnish, she brought the discussion of art education to Finland. She worked as a head of drawing teachers in Taideteollisuuskeskuskoulu, the predecessor of Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. She was also the first school inspector in drawing. Törnudd’s methodology is still interesting because it looks at increasing communality in the classroom while still focusing on individual students’ wellbeing. Törnudd’s picture pedagogy contains means that are more common in music pedagogy, and she uses vocabulary from music teaching. Törnudd’s drawing pedagogy consists of four intermodal didactics: rhythm didactics, decorative didactics, temporal didactics and affective didactics.

A key concept in this article is “art sense” (taidetunne). The art sense is not connected with the idea of good or bad taste. Törnudd points out that art education gives a worldview that develops a morally sensitive mind. Step by step the person whose art sense is being educated understands that s/he is part of nature and s/he must take care of it. Art education helps the student to understand and form an attitude that values and protects nature and understand that s/he is a particle in the world. Törnudd saw students as individuals who compose an ensemble. Törnudd’s mentality is manifested in her phrase: “Art must not be a study subject, but a principle in the whole school system”. Törnudd was scheming a “New School”, an art based compulsory school.