Tove Jansson
- Littérature
Tove Jansson (1914-2001) came from a family of artists: an adventurous mother who left her clerical family and teaching post in Stockholm to pursue life as an illustrator on the other side of the Baltic Sea, and a father, the first in his family to become an artist, who immediately began shaping the future of his newborn daughter.
Tove Jansson's destiny would be influenced by the unexpected life choices of her parents and by the innovative spirit of her time. Her mother's illustrations and her suffragist youth surrounded her, but she also witnessed how her mother put aside her own artistic ambitions to make way for her father, an undisputed authority as an artist.
Her career was marked by the Finnish Civil War, which broke out in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War, which coincided with her graduation from Fine Arts School.
Known internationally today for her children's books and the famous Moomins series, Tove Jansson is also a renowned author in Scandinavia, with numerous novels and short stories for adults, as well as a prolific painter.
One cannot ignore the highly topical environmentalist and feminist dimensions that run through her work and her career, even if she never claimed it herself as such.
