Library

Aleksandra Ionowa – Näkyjä henkimaailmasta ja rauhasta, Nina Kokkinen & Anne Pelin (eds.), The Gallen-Kallela Museum, 2025.

Aleksandra Ionowa – Näkyjä henkimaailmasta ja rauhasta offers new insights into an artist previously unknown to the general public, who worked in the guidance of the spirit world. Although Aleksandra Ionowa’s (1899–1980) family has roots in Russia, she lived most of her life in Lahti together with her partner Selma Mäkelä. The two women were deeply committed to various esoteric currents and, with Pekka Ervast’s blessing, founded the Ruusu-Risti Lotus Lodge in Lahti in the 1930s. In the summer of 1946 Aleksandra Ionowa began to receive messages from the spirit world through drawing and over the following decades she produced a collection of thousands of artworks, from which an exhibition is currently on display at the Gallen-Kallela Museum.

Based on the latest research, this non-fiction book sheds light on the lives of Aleksandra Ionowa and Selma Mäkelä. It also provides a broad historical context for Ionowa’s mediumistic art. The book has been written by such experts in esotericism and mediumistic art as Dr. Manon Hedenborg White, Dr. Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik, Dr. Nina Kokkinen, art historian Vivienne Roberts, MA Tiina Tiilikainen and MA Elina Vuorimies. The book places Aleksandra Ionowa’s art in a continuum of artist-women who have worked with the spirit world – both in Finland and internationally. It also provides an interesting perspective on the history of esotericism and clairvoyance in Finland in the first half of the 20th century. The book is lavishly illustrated not only with photographs of Ionowa’s and Mäkelä’s lives, but also with Ionowa’s mediumistic art, which has captivated artists from Wäinö Aaltonen to the present day, as well as many spiritual seekers.