Jalmari Ruokokoski

Joel Jalmari Ruokokoski, known as Jali (1886-1936) was a Finnish Expressionist painter. Although most of his works were landscapes and still-lifes, he is probably best known for a series of portraits (including numerous self-portraits) painted mostly during the 1910s. Although Ruokokoski never officially joined the November Group, (Marraskuun ryhmä), he participated in the galleries set up by the group.

Biography His father was a shoemaker from Savonia. The family returned to Finland when he was thirteen and settled in Helsinki. He studied at the "Central School of Art and Design" from 1902 to 1904 and at the "Art Society Drawing School" from 1903 to 1906. There he met Tyko Sallinen.

Back in Helsinki, he was able to sell all the paintings he had brought with him at an exhibition in the Ateneum, but spent most of the money on a drinking and partying binge. This (and a possible flirtation while he was in Helsingør) created a rift between him and his wife, which widened, so they separated. He attempted to emigrate to America in 1914, but the police removed him from the ship due to unpaid debts. Ruokokoski lived in "Drunk", painting what he saw from his windows, with an occasional trip to do landscapes. He stayed there until 1918, when he divorced Elvira and married Saima Forsström, a model, despite his studio's financial failure. They stayed together for ten years, then separated, although they never divorced and he continued to visit their five children.

He was always successful as an artist, exhibiting throughout Scandinavia as well as Rome and Milan, but continued to squander most of his money and was never far from financial ruin. He began producing quickly sketched pictures of simple things such as leaves, food and sunsets to earn extra income. An antique shop that he opened in 1924 failed after only a year. By 1931, he was barely eking out a living from a small tenement apartment.

His last exhibition was in 1935. Toward the end of that year, he was hospitalized for alcohol abuse, which had damaged his liver and given him throat cancer. He died the following spring.

Works