KATVE POP UP: Anna Korhonen – Kissojen viimeinen ehtoolllinen

You are warmly welcome to my week-long mini-exhibition “The Last Supper of Cats” at the Katvee art space during the week after May Day, 4-10 May 2026, from 12-19.

The exhibition features about forty of my naive acrylic paintings. This time, the subject matter is exclusively cat figures, cats in human clothing and in human hands.

The main work of the exhibition is the large Last Supper of Cats, which is my own version of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1498). I have tried to be faithful to the clothing style and milieu of the characters, as well as to its biblical models. The painting is also inspired by Cassius Marcius Coolidge’s famous painting series Dogs Playing Poker (-1910). The painting is a tribute to our own cat lady Disko, who turns 20 in May. Her portrait is of the cat John sitting next to the cat Jesus, who has also been suspected of being Mary Magdalene. My other cat paintings are small, and tell the story of individual cats in a variety of situations; from an ice-fishing cat or a gunfighter cat to a hippie cat playing a guitar.

I have been working as a visual artist since 1997. I have previously painted mainly expressionist human subjects, but a couple of years ago I became interested in cats, so much so that a whole exhibition of cat paintings was finally created. It felt like painting these cats opened up a whole universe of cats for me, where everything is extremely serious and at the same time amusingly light. I hope that I can convey something of the good-naturedness of cats with my paintings.

Helsinki Urban Art ry’s small art space Katve seemed like the best space for a week-long exhibition due to its location and ideology. I think the exotic and contradictory atmosphere of Vaasanaukio suits the anarchism of cats very well. As I was writing this, Disko jumped to paw at the computer keyboard, almost destroying the entire text. Let this be his greetings to the exhibition.