Finnish visual artist Leonardo da Vilhu is dead.
Risto Vilhunen owned the largest collection of art and icon in Finland. Sampo Korhonen
Finnish visual artist Leonardo da Vilhu aka Risto Vilhunen has died at the age of 79, says General.
Vilhunen was known as a painter and art collector. He collected the largest collection of art and icon in Finland, which included more than four thousand works.
In 2018, he donated much of his collection to the Finnish Orthodox Church Museum in Kuopio.
The donation consisted of nearly 900 items, the oldest of which were from the 18th century. The collection consisted of icons and other Christian objects. In addition to the icons, the collection also includes textiles and other sacral objects used in liturgical worship.
Vilhunen began to collect art in the mid-1990s. By 2009, his collection consisted of 4,140 works, of which more than 500 were icons. He finally donated the collection to Kuopio when the decision -making of the City of Vantaa took too long.
The collection was based on 1,500 drawings and graphics magazines from Finnish artists. Several renowned Finnish artists donated their works to it, and Vilhunen also raised the collection by buying and changing works.
Vilhunen’s collection is said to be one of the largest collections of a private artist. Vilhunen has said that he has collected works with intuition and that the collection had acted as an extension of alcoholism, “as a boost that gets hooked.”