(b Kaskinen [Swed. Kaskö], 21 March 1928; d Helsinki, 26 Feb 1970). Finnish painter and sculptor. He studied painting at the Workers’ Institute and at the Free School of Art in Helsinki. His early work, in the 1950s, used striking colours to create abstract pictures, but once he discovered French and Italian art in Paris and Rome in the 1960s, and in particular art connected with Roman Catholicism, he adopted a more informal means of expression and a colour symbolism largely pivoted on the ascetic use of black and white. Black was a symbol of life to Lavonen, and white, besides evoking empty space and infinity, signified the purity of northern nature, as in his painting Winter Abstract (1964; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.). In works from the black period Lavonen used fabrics, paper and other such materials to build up the picture surface (e.g. Black Painting No. 4, 1960; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.). The plastered surfaces of his white paintings, on the other hand, recall white-washed or weather-worn, plastered walls on which all kinds of cracks and lines have formed (e.g. White Surface, 1961; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.). During the mid-1960s he added large, powerfully coloured shapes, often squares, to his white paintings. Before this he had sought calming images created by optical impressions. At this time silver also began to appear in his work.