Eino Ruutsalo

(1921 - 2001)

Eino Ruutsalo (1921-2001) made mostly documentaries and animated films, in the latter genre he was influenced by Norman McLaren and Stan Brakhage with the idea of painting and scratching directly on the emulsion and then adding a jazz accompaniment to his kinetic images. Ruutsalo had been a fighter pilot during the Second World War and had studied the very au courant Abstract Expressionism after the war in both his own country of Finland and in the United States of America.