Ilmari Sysimetsä

Ilmari Sysimetsä studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and graduated as a drawing teacher in 1937. A year earlier, he already started working as a commercial artist at the Erva-Latvala advertising agency. Sysimetsä was employed there until the outbreak of World War II. In 1938, he won the poster competition for the planned 1940 Olympic Games with his famous poster showing Finnish running legend Paavo-Nurmi. The poster was later used for the 1952 Games.

After the war, Sysimetsä worked as a freelance artist and established his own silk-screen printing shop in Helsinki in 1949. 1948-53 he served as secretary of the then Association of Finnish Artistic Drawers. He died of alcohol poisoning while sitting in a cab. Sysimetsä’s son Ilkka (born 1945) became a popular singer in Finland under the artist name Frederik, and his brother Heikki (1910-2004) became a well-known architect.

In 1952 Ilmari’s Olympia poster was exhibited, a 99 x 62 cm color offset lithograph printed by Tilgmann Oy AB. Compared to the first design from 1938, only the respective dates were changed and the borders of Finland updated to the status after World War II.