To mark his 70th birthday this year, Timo Miettinen organized a series of exhibitions to showcase his collection. In addition to shows in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and at Sacrow Castle in Potsdam, his Finnish homeland is now also on the agenda: Kunsthalle Helsinki is showing over 100 works by around 50 artists in the exhibition Miettinen Collection: I Will Look Into the Earth. The works represent the diverse themes of the collection: abstract painting, portraits, landscapes, queer and politically motivated paintings, as well as design and fashion. The title of the exhibition refers to an 180 x 420 cm oil painting (2023) in the collection by British painter Sarah Cunningham, who died in November 2024 at the age of 31. In her gestural painting, characterized by experimental abstraction, she sought the deep, instinct-influenced connection between humans and nature. The exhibition runs from November 1, 2025, to January 11, 2026.
Timo Miettinen is chairman of the Finnish EM Group Oy and has been collecting art since he was 15 years old. He founded the collection, which currently comprises around 1,200 works, together with his mother. Initially, the focus was on Finnish landscape painting of the 19th and 20th centuries, but since 2004 Miettinen has expanded the collection to include international contemporary art. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki mainly features works from the 1980s to the present day. Miettinen has lived in Berlin for many years. In 2010, he acquired the Salon Dahlmann on Marburger Straße in Berlin-Charlottenburg and has been showing changing exhibitions there ever since. Miettinen attaches great importance to the public accessibility of his collection.
