ArtistFinnish
Matti Haupt
1 active items
Matti Haupt, born Carl Gustaf Mathias Haupt on 8 May 1912 in Saint Petersburg, spent his formative years in Finland before establishing a career that placed him within both Finnish and Swedish art circles. He died in 1999, leaving behind a body of work in bronze, pastel, and mixed media that consistently returned to the human figure as its primary subject. His full name in Swedish-Finnish records reflects the bilingual cultural environment of educated Finnish society at the time of his birth, and the name Matti - the Finnish diminutive - became the one under which he built his reputation.
Haupt trained at the drawing school of the Finnish Art Society (Finska Konstföreningens ritskola) in Helsinki, where he studied under Wäinö Aaltonen, one of the defining figures of Finnish sculpture in the twentieth century. Aaltonen's influence, with its emphasis on classical form and the human body rendered in durable materials, shaped the direction of Haupt's mature work. He subsequently traveled to Italy to study at the Accademia Reale di Monza in Milan, where he worked under Marino Marini, the Italian sculptor known internationally for his equestrian figures and archaizing figuration. This dual training - Nordic classical restraint on one side, Italian modernism grounded in ancient form on the other - gave Haupt's output a particular character.
Bronze was his primary material, and the subjects he returned to most often were the female figure in movement: dancers, nymphs, resting nudes, and seated poses. Titles recorded in auction catalogues include "Dansös" (dancer), "Dansösen" (the dancer), "Fiskande yngling" (fishing youth), "Snickare" (carpenter), "Stående pojke" (standing boy), "Liggande kvinna" (reclining woman), and "Hukande figur" (crouching figure). The range indicates an artist interested in the figure across age, gender, and activity rather than confined to a single type. Alongside the bronzes, Haupt worked in pastel and watercolour, producing portraits and botanical studies that auction records catalogue under titles such as "Porträtt" and "Amaryllis".
Haupt's career spanned a period of significant change in Scandinavian sculpture. The move from academic figuration toward abstraction that characterized European sculpture from the 1950s onward did not pull him entirely away from the representational tradition in which he had trained. His bronzes retain a legibility and a tactile quality - the surface texture of cast bronze, the gestural quality of a dancer's posture - that connects them to the classical stream of twentieth-century figurative sculpture rather than to the period's avant-garde.
On the auction market, Haupt's work appears regularly at houses in both Finland and Sweden. Auctionist records show 15 items distributed across Stockholms Auktionsverk Magasin 5, Bukowskis Helsinki, Metropol, Bukowskis Stockholm, and Hagelstam in Helsinki. Sculptures dominate the category breakdown, with drawings and paintings also present. Top recorded results include a bronze "Dansös" at 6,500 EUR and a gilded bronze "Dansösen" at 6,000 SEK. Pastel works and mixed-media drawings have appeared at between 350 SEK and 2,600 SEK, suggesting that the bronzes carry the strongest collector demand.