Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo

Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo (27 January 1900, in Impilahti, Karelia – 15 September 1997, Simrishamn, Sweden) was a Finnish artist, architect and thinker. Inventor of "AE-evohomology" life philosophy. He was a witness to the Russian Revolution. "Ahola-Valo has lived through many of the dreams and tragedies of our century: Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg in 1905, the collapse of Czarist Russia and the birth of the Soviet Union, the artistic utopias and avantgardism of the early 20th century, Stalinism, flight from the country,...the dissolution and abolition of the Soviet Union along with the rest of us. Marc Chagall, Sergei Eisenstein, Nadezhda Konstaninovna Krupskaya, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Tatlin: all are episodes and encounters in his life story." (Kimmo Sarje: With Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo in the Early Days of the Soviet Union. In: Siksi, 1/1992, p. 11.) Aleksanteri Ahola, nickname Ali, started to write a russian diary as a schoolboy in 1907 (part one), translated into Finnish by himself and first published in 1988 (Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo: Koulupojan päiväkirja. Ensimmäinen kouluvuosi. Hämeenlinna: ELPO ry 1988, ISBN 951-99967-0-2). At the age of 14 he wrote a play, Aikuiset ja lapset kasvatuksen pyörteissä (Adults and children in the whirls of education). "Aleksanteri Ahola and his friends had a theatre of their own in early 1910's in the villa community of Vyritsa in Ingermanland, 60 kilometers to the south of St. Petersburg. It was called Four Pine Theatre because it was situated outdoors. There were one hundred seats on benches in the amphitheatre. In the background on the stage there were carpets hanging with paintings attached to them. Ali Ahola painted them himself and they showed local buildings, forest, clouds, whatever needed." (Kai Kyösti Kaukovalta: Näytelmän taustaa ja reunahuomautuksia. In: Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo: Aikuiset ja lapset kasvatuksen pyörteissä. Hämeenlinna: Elpo ry 1997, p. 5-9, translated into English by K. K. Kaukovalta for mrs. L. Sabovljev, member of Elpo ry, 1999.) "He began his art studies at the Pihkova School of Applied Arts under von der Flitt from 1919-21, and continued at the Vitebsk School of Applied Arts and Crafts from 1921-22, and then at the Odessa School of Applied Arts from 1923-24. (...) His first solo exhibition was in Vitebsk in 1922. (Kimmo Sarje: With Aleksanteri Ahola-Valo in the Early Days of the Soviet Union. In: Siksi, Helsinki: 1/1992, p.