Eino Ruutsalo – ‘Moving Espalier’, 1967 – Relief: nails and string on painted board

Moving Espalier (1967) by Eino Ruutsalo is a compact wall piece composed of nails and black and white strings stretched across a black-painted wooden board (45 × 45 × 9 cm). The work is structured around a series of vertical lines, creating a rhythmic, almost architectural framework that is disrupted by angled connections and slight irregularities in spacing.

The contrast between the light and dark strings produces a subtle optical vibration, while the raised elements cast shifting shadows that change with the viewer’s position. This gives the otherwise static materials a sense of movement and depth.
The title refers to espalier, the training of plants along a support, which is echoed in the controlled yet organic arrangement of lines. As in much of Ruutsalo’s work from the 1960s, the piece explores how simple materials can generate visual rhythm, spatial tension, and a quiet sense of motion.

About Eino Ruutsalo

Eino Ruutsalo (Helsinki 1921 – Helsinki 2001) was one of Finland’s most innovative postwar artists, a restless experimentalist whose work traversed painting, film, sculpture, visual poetry, and kinetic art. Born in Helsinki, Ruutsalo first trained as a pilot during the Second World War before turning to art, studying at the Parsons School of Design in New York in 1949–50 and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. These experiences exposed him to international modernist movements and laid the groundwork for a career marked by radical experimentation.

Although Ruutsalo began as an abstract painter in the 1950s, it was during the 1960s that he emerged as a pioneering figure in Finnish avant-garde art. This decade saw him abandon the limits of static painting in favour of works that incorporated movement, light, sound, and time. Inspired by the international kinetic art movement, Ruutsalo developed lumino-kinetic objects and experimental films that explored the dynamic relationship between motion and perception. His work paralleled the innovations of European artists associated with Op Art, Nouveau Réalisme, and Fluxus, yet retained a highly personal visual language.

One of his most celebrated works from this period is Kinetic Pictures (1962), an experimental short film in which Ruutsalo painted, scratched, and manipulated the filmstrip by hand to create rhythmic, pulsating abstractions. This groundbreaking work won international recognition and established him as a pioneer of experimental cinema in Finland. Throughout the decade, he created a body of “kinetic poems,” light constructions, and moving assemblages in which words, light, and mechanical motion interacted to produce shifting visual experiences. These works reflected his conviction that art should be in a “field of constant transformation,” challenging the permanence and stillness traditionally associated with painting.
Ruutsalo’s 1960s kinetic works were radical within the Finnish context and helped introduce new interdisciplinary approaches to Nordic contemporary art. He frequently collaborated with musicians, poets, and dancers, expanding the sensory dimensions of his work and anticipating later multimedia installation practices.

Today, Ruutsalo’s works are held in major Finnish collections, including the Finnish National Gallery, particularly the Ateneum Art Museum, which highlighted his experimental 1960’s production in a centenary exhibition in 2021. His works are also included in the collections of the HAM Helsinki Art Museum, the Pori Art Museum, and the Didrichsen Art Museum. Through these collections, Ruutsalo’s visionary contributions to kinetic and media art continue to influence contemporary understandings of movement, light, and the expanded possibilities of artistic form.