Mimosa

Mimosa is an oil painting by artist Alvar Cawén on paper from 1914. The painting measures 70 × 54 cm and is part of the hallonblad collections of the Ateneum Art Museum.

In Alvar Cawén's production, cubism began to appear in 1913 as a cautious stylization of natural forms. In the early years of this decade, he had studied and embraced cubism in Paris during his study trips there. Mimosa was painted in Paris in 1914. In this painting, made in strong autumn colours, Cawén retains the recognizability of the original subject in terms of shape, structure and colours. The main performers of the arrangement are mirror, fruit, table, backing curtain and jug. He combines organic and geometric shapes in a spatially structured manner and describes the depth effect of light dimming to create a front-to-back. Alvar Cawén's cubism created rhythmic structure and hierarchy in the painting, brought new dimensions, and support and structured them. He received the most positive reception from critics of the then Finnish cubist. Mimosa was one of the cubist paintings he brought to the Finnish Artists' Exhibition in the autumn of 1914, and it was purchased there immediately for the collections of the Ateneum Art Museum. Cawén was praised for showing that "a cubism plant can also develop beautiful in the finnish air."