Friendship and love have probably inspired Eronen more than any other theme. He maintained many international contacts and he was a close friend of the famous Estonian sculptor Kalju Reitel (1921-2004) and his wife Eha. Eronen travelled regularly across the Baltic to see them. One such visit took place soon after Eronen had lost his …
The national competition for the design a public monument to the composer Jean Sibelius was based on anonymously submitted miniature statues. The names of the entrants were not public and for this reason it was unclear to the Sibelius family for a couple of years who had sculpted the proposal portraying Sibelius figuratively, a design …
Eronen’s aunt was a talented pianist who accompanied famous singers. Once she played with the opera singer Pia Ravenna at an event where she caught a Spanish fever. She was taken to hospital and died prematurely. The funeral was held at her home, the Otrakkala estate in Karelia. Three choirs and a brass band performed …
In 1968, Eronen was commissioned to design the Crucifix for Järvenpää Church, a concrete building conceived in the brutalist style that was then dominant in Europe. Eronen was given full artistic freedom, and he carved the wooden crucifix, including the traditional inscription ‘INRI’, with his bare hands, leaving visible traces of each stroke of the …
The sea, and water as an element, were an important source of inspiration for many of Eronen’s sculptures and sketches. The happiest years of his childhood, before World War II, were spent with his widowed mother and older sister at the family villa in Terijoki in Finnish Karelia, where they enjoyed the lively, international atmosphere …
When Tohmajärvi county wanted to commemorate the famous Finnish author Maiju Lassila, they decided to commission a relief from Eronen, who had lived in the town as a boy. Eronen was born in Finnish Karelia, in an area of the country that was lost to Soviet Russia in the Second World War. A war refugee, …
A veterans’ association commissioned the Pro Patria memorial in honour of the soldiers from southern Finland who lost their lives in World War II. The names of 300 fallen soldiers are engraved into the ‘Name Book’ and to this day the list is extended every time the remains of a missing soldier are re-patriated, blessed …
The bronze sculpture of an empty grain measure in the churchyard at Kiihtelysvaara is a memorial to the victims of the 1864-1868 famine. Kiihtelysvaara county lost many souls to the famine – 550 persons died in the spring of 1865 alone. The memorial represents the empty hands of a child, an adult and an old …