Ole Kandelin was a visual artist born in 1920 in Porvoo, Finland. He was a prodigy who created his first paintings when he was only 14 years of age. He also developed his own highly personal style at an early age. During the 1940s, Kandelin became one of the early ground-breakers of Finnish abstract art. He was constantly looking for new ways of expression and managed to incorporate many different art trends − from surrealism to cubism, from lyrical abstraction to concretism. He is said to be the first Finnish artist to move consistently toward abstract expression.

     He moved to Helsinki in 1937 and first worked as a commercial artist. From 1939−1940 he studied at the Free Art School (Fria Konstskolan) until being drafted into the military in 1940. He was released from the Army in 1941 after being diagnosed with tuberculosis and Kandelin returned to his studies and began participating in group exhibitions. He had his first solo exhibition in 1944. 

     Kandelin again fell sick in 1945 and spent extended periods in sanatoriums, first in Finland and then in Sweden. The stay at the Hessleby sanatorium in Sweden from 1945–1946 gave him a necessary distance from the Finnish art world. Familiarity with French modernism and the illustrations in art books, and with help from the Swedish artist Sigurd Nyberg, Kandelin fully embrace a non-figurative art style. His major breakthrough came as a result of a solo exhibition in Stockholm, but Kandelin was already then too ill to travel.

     From 1946–1947 Kandelin painted for over half a year in Gothenburg, Uppsala and Stockholm – working at an improbable pace, producing about one painting per day. Kandelin considered himself able to lift Finnish art out of its artistic slump and, despite his illness, did not seem to lack either self-confidence or courage. "All my time has been spent experimenting, I have had no time left for anything else. If I could put these intentions into action, you would see something extraordinary in Finland," he said.

     In 1947 Ole Kandelin died of tuberculosis at the early age of 26, but nevertheless lived through an amazing artistic development circle spanning only eight years. In this short time he created a wide-ranging oeuvre of paintings and is considered to have been essential in opening the way for Finnish post-WWII modernism and abstraction.

     The following year the Helsinki Art Gallery held a memorial exhibition for the artist. Other memorial exhibitions were held at Galleria Strindberg in 1962, and the Amos Anderson Art Museum in 1978. In 2008–2009 the Espoo Museum of Modern Art held a major retrospective of the artist's works. The artist is represented in the Finnish National Gallery, and Imatra Art Museum.