Aleksandra Ionowa: The Esoteric Art of Finland’s Forgotten Mediumistic Artist
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An exhibition in Espoo, Finland, emphasizes the painter’s Theosophical connections and reveals a secret about her relationship with Blavatsky.
April 5, 2025
The exhibition “Aleksandra Ionowa – Visions of the Spirit World and Peace” opened at Gallen-Kallela Museum in Espoo, Finland, in February and continues until June 1, 2025. It explores the visionary and mystic art of Aleksandra “Schura” Ionowa (1899–1980), a passionate Theosophist who worked under the guidance of spiritual Masters.
“Heaven was in me; I was in Heaven.” This is how Aleksandra Ionowa described her intense spiritual experience in 1946, which created in her a burning need for artistic expression. The experience led Ionowa to embark on her artistic path that endured until her passing in 1980.
Ionowa left behind a staggering collection of more than 1,200 artworks. Gallen-Kallela Museum’s exhibition aims to place Ionowa’s art, which has been long disregarded by art historians, into the lengthy continuum of mediumistic female artists and the cultural history of visionary art. Ionowa’s exhibition is curated by Finland’s leading researcher on the connections between art and religiosity in modern art, Donner-Institute’s doctor-researcher Nina Kokkinen, who has previously dealt among other subjects with the esoteric spirituality in the art of Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), Pekka Halonen (1865–1933), and Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931).
Through Kokkinen’s and other researchers’ extensive archival work, the exhibition depicts Ionowa as a key figure in the early 20th century esoteric milieu of Finland, with deep connections to the co-masonic order of Le Droit Humain, the Theosophical Society, and the Rosicrucian-Theosophical organization Ruusu-Risti, led by Finland’s best-known Theosophist, Pekka Ervast (1875–1934). The exhibition is accompanied by a research publication, a joint effort by Nina Kokkinen, the Gallen-Kallela Museum, and the Ionowa Society. It features articles from experts of esotericism and mediumistic art such as Kokkinen and Manon Hedenborg-White, art historian Vivienne Roberts, as well as Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik, Tiina Tiilikainen, and Elina Vuorimies.
In several respects, the earlier art history narrative has minimized the effects of Ionowa’s decades-long spiritual work on her artistic awakening. Alongside with Ionowa’s art, the exhibition highlights her esoteric path through the closely-knit networks of Finnish Theosophical organizations.
Ionowa was born into a Russian family in the city of Lahti in 1899 and from an early age traveled regularly to Russia. The childhood years in Russia left a permanent mark on her life, and Orthodoxy grew into an essential part of her art and spiritual worldview. The key turning point of Ionowa’s life was in 1926, when she met her future life partner and lifelong friend Selma Mäkelä (1892–1975). At the time, Mäkelä was already a devoted Theosophist. She had been a member of Ervast’s Ruusu-Risti and the Finnish Theosophical Society since 1920 and of Le Droit Humain since 1922. Through Mäkelä, Ionowa quickly adopted Theosophy and Freemasonry as cornerstones of her spirituality and in 1928 also joined the ranks of Ruusu-Risti. Ervast’s organization was a mixture of Freemasonry and Theosophy, which used masonic ceremonies and grade systems as part of the spiritual development of its members. Ruusu-Risti also emphasized Christ as the most important Theosophical Mahatma or Master and highlighted the esoteric interpretations of Finland’s national epic “Kalevala.”
Ruusu-Risti’s Lootus-lodge established in Lahti in 1932 became the backbone of Mäkelä’s and Ionowa’s spiritual life. Ionowa claimed she was in contact with spiritual Masters such as Morya, Koot Hoomi, Saint Germain, and Christ, from whom she transmitted messages and apparitions through her dreams and the interpretations of clairvoyants. She felt that the Theosophical Masters guided her spiritual development.
There are many interfaces with Ionowa’s art and that of Ilona Harima (1911–1986), a Finnish mediumistic artist of the same era, who also claimed to be in contact with the Great White Brotherhood. During the 1930s, both Ionowa and Mäkelä began to view Ionowa more and more as a spiritual being and a Theosophical Master. These claims caused friction with the other members of Ruusu-Risti, who saw Ionowa’s visions more as delusions than genuine spiritual revelations. The friction eventually led to Ionowa’s and Mäkelä’s resignation from the organization in 1943.
After their departure from Ruusu-Risti, Mäkelä and Ionowa still kept contact with many influential Theosophists and Co-masons, some of whom believed in the genuineness of Ionowa’s otherworldly visions. Among their circle were the pioneer of Finnish Co-masonry Kyllikki Ignatius (1877–1951), spiritualist author Helmi Krohn (1871–1967), and composer and science fiction author Juhani Pohjanmies (1893–1959). Ionowa and Mäkelä joined forces with Pohjanmies in 1950 when they established the Kalevan risti-lodge (Kalevala’s Cross lodge) in Hollola. The lodge was part of an order called Kalevan pojat (The Sons of Kalevala), which draw inspiration from Theosophy, Freemasonry, and the esoteric interpretations of the Kalevala by Pekka Ervast.
In 1946 Ionowa, who had no prior artistic experience, had a profound spiritual revelation, after which she began drawing feverishly and produced dozens of drawings in the course of a week. Later, Ionowa started drawing “soul flowers,” hundreds of which she gave away as presents to her friends and colleagues. Ionowa’s “soul flowers” were automatic drawings of flowers that depicted the souls of the persons they were gifted to. The ambiguous “soul flower” drawings grew increasingly abstract as the years progressed.
Other frequent themes in Ionowa’s art were the Christ and his thematic rose from Ruusu-Risti’s Christian Theosophy. Ervast connected the Christ to each human’s own divinity and higher levels of consciousness. He referred the human’s dormant divine potential as the “Christ-principle” or mystical Christ. In her “Christ-face” paintings, Ionowa portrayed Christ both as a Theosophical Master and as the higher divine level of consciousness of each individual. According to Ionowa the esoteric revelations of her art stemmed from the Rosicrucian “Christ-principle.” At the end of her life, Ionowa had drawn hundreds of “soul flowers” and “Christ-faces.” With the help of her “magic pen,” as Ionowa called it, she was able to deploy her soul’s divine essence, which she used both in her art and in transmitting messages from the spiritual realm.
Concurrently with her mediumistic drawing and painting practices, Ionowa started to play improvised piano music using only the black keys of a piano. Gallen-Kallela Museum’s third floor has been dedicated to Ionowa’s musical wonderings. There, visitors can listen to digitized tape recordings of Ionowa’s playing and watch old silent cinefilm clips that show Ionowa in the middle of her drawing sessions. For Ionowa music was always closely connected to her visual art. An aphorism she wrote in the early 1960s says it all: “That what I play, I draw; and that what I draw, I play.”
During her life Ionowa remained fairly unknown in the Finnish art world. In the 1950s and early 1960s, her work was mainly showcased in private homes. After the vicar of Lauttasaari parish, Voitto Viro (1914 –1999), grew fond of Ionowa’s work, her art found its way to a larger audience. With the help of Viro, a substantial exhibition of Ionowa’s art was held at the parish hall of Lauttasaari in 1964. During the same year, Viro’s book “Taivas oli minussa” (The Heaven Was in Me) dealing with the life and art of Ionowa was published. This created a new interest on Ionowa’s art in the 1970s, and her work was exhibited throughout the decade in some of the major cities of Finland. Art historian Vivienne Roberts helped Ionowa gain international fame in 2022 when she organized the Creative Spirits exhibition at The College of Psychic Studies in London, which showcased almost seventy examples of Ionowa’s paintings and drawings.
The exhibition “Aleksandra Ionowa – Visions of the Spirit World and Peace” is a story of two determined women artists, Ionowa and Mäkelä, with a spiritual mission, whose life intersected with numerous esoteric orders and currents, artists and occultists. The exhibition and the companion research publication also brilliantly present Ionowa’s work within a larger framework of mediumistic art. Her visionary art is compared among others to the works of Madge Gill (1882–1961) and Anne Cassel (1860–1937). Finland’s most renowned supporter of alternative art, Erkki Pirtola (1950–2016), called Ionowa an “inner seer” and compared her mediumistic art to that of Hilma af Klint (1862–1944). Vivienne Roberts highlights in her article Ionowa’s role in the long continuum of mediumistic women artists who communicated with the spirit world such as Anna Mary Howitt-Watts (1824–1884), Georgiana Houghton (1814–1884), and Josefa Tolrá (1880–1959).
Nina Kokkinen and the other researchers of Ionowa have done excellent work in lifting a forgotten visionary artist from obscurity back into the history of mediumistic art. The Ionowa research publication complements the exhibition extremely well and manages to point out many new interesting findings concerning Ionowa’s life and artistic work. One of the most fascinating new findings Kokkinen has made is the answer to the enigma of “H,” the strange letter with which Ionowa signed most of her paintings and drawings. The meaning of the “H” has puzzled art historians since Ionowa’s passing. When Kokkinen was writing the last draft of her Ionowa-article, she was revealed the true meaning of the “H” by Hannele Pohjanmies, the daughter of Juhani Pohjanmies. It stands for Helena and points to the founding mother of the Theosophical movement, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891). As it turns out, Ionowa and her inner circle were convinced she was the reincarnation of Madame Blavatsky.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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