A familiar duck in a different world

The Art of Kaj Stenvall

The name of Kaj Stenvall rose to fame in the world of Finnish art about ten years ago when he began to paint a very familiar-looking duck in a variety of different settings. There was nothing in his subjects that hinted at a flavour of something Finnish except, a trace of melancholic in the landscape. The scenes depicted in his pictures are from the world at large and his duck often appears in absurd and universal settings. There really is nothing in his paintings that you could put your finger on to connect them to any particular corner of the world, especially not to Finland.