Amos Anderson was Finland’s leading newspaper publisher, a respected businessman and one of the greatest cultural patrons in country’s history. Anderson was born in 1878 into a farming family in the village of Brokärr on Kimito island, southwestern Finland. He studied at a Swedish-language business school in Turku and briefly abroad. In 1902, he moved to Helsinki.

As a strong background figure in the fields of art and culture, Anderson supported Helsinki’s Swedish Theatre and Kunsthalle as well as the restoration of churches and numerous artists and associations. Traces of his life’s work can be seen at Åbo Akademi University and at the Finnish Institute in Rome, Villa Lante.

In 1940, Anderson founded the Föreningen Konstsamfundet association, which became his heir after his death. The association continues Anderson’s work. In the 1920s, Amos Anderson bought about 7,000 hectares of land in the Turku archipelago. In 1927, he acquired the Söderlångvik estate in Kimito and converted it into an Italian-style villa during the 1930s. Anderson died in Söderlångvik at the age of 82 on Easter 1961.