Academic literature on the topic 'Painting, Estonian'

The epitaph donated by Hans and Jaan, two peasants from Türi parish, is evidence of the acceptance of ecclesiastic values and religious devotion among the Estonian peasantry. Other examples of this tendency from the Swedish era also exist. For instance, the grand wheel crosses, typical for North Estonia, that were once located in the Türi churchyard; and a chandelier (1659) donated by a peasant in the Keila church, the size of which exceeds those gifted by manor lords. From a later period, the stained-glass coats of arms of the peasantry in the Ilumäe chapel (1729) are also an example of this heightened sense of self-awareness and its display in houses of worships.Along with the hundreds and hundreds of works donated to churches by nobles, the epitaph painting depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds is a rare example of a painting gifted to a church by farmers, which also commemorates them. Hans and Jaan have now earned a place in Estonian (art) history: the pictures of the two simple men are the first known portraits of peasants whose names we know.

The article begins by explaining the background of sea motifs, which can be understood as sublime in the classical theory of arts, beginning with Pseudo-Longinus and continuing with Boileau and Burke, and the re-visitation of Aristotelian theory by the latter. This part of the article focuses on the observations of grandeur, dramatic change and danger in nature, which were defined as sublime in antiquity (based on examples from Homer and Genesis in Longinus or the Gigantomachy motifs in ancient art), as well as on the role of emotion (pathos) in the Sublime. The Renaissance and Early Modern Sublime reveal the continuation of these trends in Burke’s theories and the landscape descriptions of Radcliffe in the Mysteries of Udolpho. In the latter, we also see a quotation from Beattie’s Minstrel, whose motif of a sea-wrecked mariner represents the same type of sublime as Wordsworth’s Peele Castle (which, in its turn, was inspired by a painting by Sir George Beaumont). This sublimity is felt by human beings before mortal danger and nature’s untamed and excessive forces. In German poetry and art such sublimity can be seen in the works of Hölderlin or Caspar David Friedrich. However, 16th and 17th century poetry and painting rarely focused on such sublimity and preferred the more classical harmonia discors, in which ruins or the sea were just a slight accent underlining general harmony.The article continues, focusing on the sea motifs in Estonian art and poetry. In Estonian art (initially created by Baltic Germans), the reflections of the magnificent Sublime in the paintings by August Matthias Hagen can be seen as the influence of Caspar David. In poetry, we see sublime grandeur in the ode called Singer by the first Estonian poet, Kristjan Jaak Peterson, who compared the might of the words of future Estonian poets to stormy torrents during a thunderstorm, in contrast to the Estonian poetry of his day, which he compared to a quiet stream under the moonlight. The grandeur, might and yearning for sublimity is reflected in the prose poem Sea (1905) by Friedebert Tuglas, who belonged to the Young Estonia movement. This movement was more interested in modernity and city life than in romantically dangerous or idyllic landscapes. However, the main trends of Estonian poetry seem to dwell on idyllic landscapes and quietly sparkling seas, as for example, in a poem by Villem Ridala or sea landscape by Konrad Mägi. We also see this type of sublimity at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries in the soundscapes of the sea by Ester Mägi or paintings by Aili Vint.After World War II, the influence of the romantic ode genre and sublime can be seen in a translation of Byron’s Stanzas for Music (1815) by Minni Nurme (1950). In Byron’s gentle, sweet and serene picture of a lulled and charmed ocean, the underlying dimension of the divine, and the grandeur and power of the music is not expressed explicitly. Nurme tries to bring the translation into accord with the ode genre, thereby causing a shift from the serene to the grand sublime, by focusing on the depth of water and feelings, the greatness of the ocean, and most of all, the rupture of the soul, which has been the most important factor in the sublime theory of Pseudo-Longinus. Her translation also seems influenced by her era of post-war Soviet Estonia (so that Byron’s allusions to the divine word have been replaced by the might of nature). In the same period, Estonia’s most vivid description of the romantic sublime appears in the choral poem Northern Coast (1958) composed by Gustav Ernesaks, with lyrics by another Estonian poet, Kersti Merilaas.Coastline in a leap, on the spur of attacking; each other tightly the sea and the land here are holding The rocky banks, breast open to winds, are hurling downwards the pebbles and chunks. Its adversary’s waves now grasp for its feet, gnawing and biting into the shores. Stop now! No further from here, neither of you can proceed any more! Full of might is the sea, more powerful is the land.

The artist Endel Kõks (1912–1983) is a member of the same generation of Estonian art classics as Elmar Kits and Lepo Mikko. After Kits’s and Kõks’s debut at the exhibition of the Administration of the Cultural Endowment’s Fine Art Foundation (KKSKV) in Tallinn in 1939, the three of them started to be spoken about as the promising Tartu trio. In 1944, Endel Kõks ended up in Germany as a wounded soldier, while Kits and Mikko remained in Estonia. The Kõks’s works that have surreptitiously arrived in his homeland are incidental and small in number. Thus, without any proof, an image developed or was developed of him in Soviet-era art history as a mediocre painter and especially as a weak abstractionist, which is somewhat prevalent even today. I would dispute this based on the conclusions that I reached when helping to organise the exhibition of exile Estonian art between 2008 and 201142 and Endel Kõks’s solo exhibition between 2011 and 201343; conclusions that I have supplemented with the opinions expressed by exile Estonian art historians and artists.In 1951 Kõks moved to Sweden. Paul Reets has highlighted the years between 1952 and 1956, and assumed that these were difficult years due to the contradictions he faced. According to Reets, one obstacle was influence of the Pallas on Kõks’s painting style, which was conservative and adhered to the trends of Late Cubism. According to both Eevi End and Paul Reets, Kõks painted his first abstract painting in 1956 Rahutus (Restlessness) according to the former and Konflikt (Conflict) according to the latter). A black-and-white photo exists of Restlessness, which is slightly reminiscent of Pollock, and this is not the same work that P. Reets refers to. They both note that this was a convincing and mature abstraction not a searching for form, and as Reets states, Kõks had severed himself from the Pallas.The abstract paintings created between 1956 and 1960 – Kompositsioon (Composition) (1958), Rõõmus silmapilk (Joyful Moment) (1959) and others – are constructed on the impact of a joyfully colourful palette and lines, and demonstrate a kinship with the abstract works of Vassili Kandinsky. There is also a similarity to Arshile Gorky, whose works he may have seen at the exhibition of modern American art in Stockholm in 1953.Kõks’s transition into a pure form of abstraction occurred in 1963. Reets has characterised this as a “the most wondrous year that one can expect to see in an artist’s life. Not an unexpected year, but one that was unexpectedly and extremely rich when it came to his works.” The artist started to create series of works, of which the best known is undoubtedly Elektroonika (Electronics), which was comprised of 36 sheets. According to Kõks, he developed the need and idea to create the series while listening to experimental music, watching experimental films and thinking about nuclear physics. Created with a glass printing technique, or vitreography, each work is unique due to the post-printing processing, paint dripping, spraying and additional brushstrokes and images. Of course, all this alludes to Jackson Pollock.In 1962, Kõks painted the abstract composition Astraalne (Astral), which depicts a red circle and bent violet rectangle next to it on an interesting yellowish-brown surface that creates a rough effect. Using only these two symbols, the artist creates a sense of floating in cosmic space. Starting in 1964–1965 this style gradually came to dominate his work, and in was in this style that Kõks created the works that express the greatness of his talent and the charm of the “shaper of nature forms” in the purest sense.The construction of these works is brilliantly simple, and comprised of symbols and images placed on a relatively uniform surface. The nervous brittleness and rapid movement have disappeared from the paintings. The mood is calm and reveling. There is a monumental feel to many of the pictures. Masterful, delicate colour combinations triumph. And as time goes on, the more abundant and interesting the texture becomes. Eevi End believes that Kõks was influenced by Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland and other representatives of the school of Hard-edge painting that other influential direction operating in American abstractionism during the 20th century. Kõks himself has defined his abstract paintings as biomorphic abstraction, characterized by a free formalism, spatiality and atmospherics (Arshile Gorky, William de Kooning, Mark Tobey, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollock.)Kõks’s abstraction that features intellectual and cognizant images is totally the opposite of Elmar Kits’s excellent and spontaneous colourful abstraction. Kits remains true to the Pallas colour tradition; Kõks breaks out of it. Kõks feels secure painting abstract pictures and enjoys the game, which cannot be said of the thoroughly abstract works of Lepo Mikko or Alfred Kongo. Those who doubt this statement should remember that, in order to provide an assessment of Kõks’s abstract pictures, one must have seen them in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Conclusions cannot be drawn based exclusively on the works in Estonia. As an abstractionist, he is in no way weaker than his contemporaries, just very different and the determination of superiority is a matter of taste. Endel Kõks’s greatness lies in the fact that he was able to fit with what was happening in world art (which many exile artists could not); he experimented with new directions and finally put together something new for himself, and thereby developed Estonian art as a whole.

The article accompanies the comments and publication of letters written by an Estonian artist Woldemar Friedrich Krüger to his friend Karl Eduard von Liphart, an art collector and expert from Munich between 1832–1834. The main intention of the author has been to provide the reader with the necessary short biography of the Woldemar Krüger and to contextualize the years in which the letters were written. Also the paper aims to open up some subjects and keywords that occur in the letters sent by Krüger to Liphart. The letters that are deposited in the Herder Institute Dokumentesammlung (DSHI) illustrate the early years in the lives of Krüger and Liphart when they both were in their twenties and only in the very beginning with their professional career. Artist Krüger, who was able to study and travel abroad only with the help of the Lipharts family, was especially interested in acquiring technical skills in lithography and encaustic (wax painting). The letters from Munich reveal us a very practically minded and careful personality as Krüger even hesitates before travelling to Italy being afraid that it could lead him away from his routine and practicing. Unfortunately, the letters do not prove whether Krüger attended any official and regular art course during his stay in Munich. However, the letters add valuable information about the developing years of both of the artist Woldemar Krüger and art connoisseur Karl Eduard von Liphart. The correspondence enables us to have a glance at the ideas and acquaintances that they shared and how studying abroad could look like in the 19th century.

Vormsi is a small island that belonged to the Oesel-Wiek bishopric during the Middle Ages. There is a church on the island that is dedicated to St Olaf, the Norwegian king who was undoubtedly the most popular saint among the Scandinavians. A short article written by Villem Raam in the anthology Eesti Arhitektuur (Estonian Architecture, 1996) is the only one worth mentioning that has appeared to date on the architectural history of the Vormsi church.The Vormsi church is comprised of a sanctuary and nave. Only the sanctuary was completed during the Middle Ages, and the stone nave was not completed until 1632. During the restoration of the church between 1989 and 1990, fragments were found of the foundation of the wooden church that predated the stone one. It is possible that the wooden church was utilised throughout the Middle Ages as a congregation room.Currently, it is believed that the Vormsi sanctuary was built during the 15th century. This dating is based on the pyramid-shaped vault consoles – a similar shape also appears in the chapel of the gate tower in the Padise Cistercian monastery. Actually, the Padise consoles have been reused. Their original location is unknown and their completion is impossible to date even within the time frame of a century.The most significant is the eastern wall of the Vormsi sanctuary, where a spacious niche with pointed arch is located. This Cistercian composition was also used in the Haapsalu Cathedral and apparently that was the model for the Vormsi church. The Haapsalu Cathedral is a surprisingly simple single-nave church with three bays. The church has richly decorated capitals on its wall pillars, on which both Romanesque and Early Gothic motifs have been used. At least some of the capitals have been hewn by a master who previously worked on the construction of the capital hall in the Riga Cathedral. The northern section of the Haapsalu Cathedral was apparently built in the 1260s. In the vicinity of Riga there is a church with a floor plan that is an exact counterpart to the one in Haapsalu – the Holme / Martinsala Church that dates back to about the 13th century. Considering both the floor plan and the sculptured decorations, it is believable that the designers and builders of the Haapsalu Cathedral came from the Riga environs.Pärnu is also on the Riga-Haapsalu route. Actually, two towns existed there during the Middle Ages. For a short time, Old-Pärnu on the right bank of the river had been the centre of the Oesel-Wiek bishopric before Haapsalu. However, the left bank of the river was controlled by the Livonian Order. There is very little information about the Old-Pärnu Cathedral that was completed around 1251 and destroyed by the Lithuanians in 1263. However, one thing is known – it also had a single-nave with three bays. There is no information about the design of the eastern wall of the cathedral. However, the sanctuary of St Nicholas’ Church in New-Pärnu had an eastern niche similar to the one in Haapsalu. It is not impossible that the motif was borrowed from the cathedral across the river or its ruins. Attention should also be paid to the fact that the design of the northern and southern walls in the sanctuary of Pärnu’s St Nicholas’ Church are similar to the Vormsi church. Therefore, there is no doubt that these two sanctuaries are architecturally and genetically related. Apparently the Vormsi sanctuary was built immediately or soon after the completion of the Haapsalu Cathedral – not later than 1270. It is not impossible that the vaults were constructed sometime later.The vault painting in the Vormsi sanctuary is probably inspired by the “paradise vaults” in Gotland. The Vormsi painting is strikingly primitive. In Estonia, this primitive style can also be seen in the churches in Ridala and Pöide.There is a squint (hagioscope) on the southern wall of the Vormsi church sanctuary, and an unusual sacrament niche with a light shaft in the eastern wall. This does not date back to the time when the sanctuary was built, but was added later. There have been at least eight such sacrament niches in Estonia, most of which were built in the 15th century.

The article is inspired by the fascinating findings and conservationwork done on the Pompeian style murals in Estonian manor housesduring the last few decades. The focus is on the murals in the manorhouses of Voltveti, Suure-Kõpu and Vana-Võidu – all of whichbelonged to different members of the von Stryk family of BalticGermans. The article focuses on the figurative paintings and the styleof the murals, as well as on an art-history-related interpretation anda wider contextual analysis of the Vana-Võidu wall paintings. Thesefinds are the most recent, and this article will study the possiblemodels and ideas for them, search for their art history context andimportance among the triple Pompejanum of the von Strycks. Thewall paintings in the Suure-Kõpu and Voltveti manor houses areused as reference material.The Vana-Võidu, Suure-Kõpu and Voltveti manor houses wererebuilt in the late neoclassical style between 1830s and 1840s. Thewall paintings in these late neoclassical manor houses were madeduring the second half of the 19th century and were inspired, in allcases, by a desire to achieve the look of an ancient interior. There arePompeian-style murals in all three manors. In Suure-Kõpu and Vana-Võidu, can see figurative paintings as well as the division of the wallsinto panels, which is characteristic of the Pompeian style. In Voltveti,there are no figurative paintings and the colour palette – alternatingwarm and cool pastel shades – is not characteristic of the Pompeianstyle, but the ornamental motives are derived from antiquity. It isknown that different publications about the excavated Campaniancities, were available in Estonia in the 19th century. Apparently, thevon Stryk brothers and the painter(s) were able to use the publishedmotifs, because the figurative paintings at Vana-Võidu and Suure-Kõpu are very accurately detailed.

Summary This article is dedicated to the “Baltars” collective porcelain painting workshop (1924–1930), founded in Riga, Latvia by three modernist artists: painters Romans Suta (1896–1944) and Aleksandra Beļcova (1892–1981) and graphic artist Sigismunds Vidbergs (1890–1970).The “Baltars” phenomenon is significant because of the innovations that the artists brought to the landscape of Latvian porcelain manufacturing and its exhibition activities in the 1920s and the early 1930s, both local and in the Baltic Sea region—Lithuania, Estonia, and Sweden. The article investigates “Baltars” foundation and closure, artistic activities of the company, its attempts to enter the international art and trade scene, and its accomplishments. Special attention is paid to the amalgamation of modernisation, nationalism, and state-building manifested in their paintings on porcelain. Due to the present growing interest in porcelain art in Latvia, triggered by numerous exhibitions and publications, discourse on the “Baltars” phenomenon has become topical.

The author turns to the little-known biographical aspects of two outstanding icon painters – the Old Believer-Bespopovets from Estonia Pimen Maksimovich Sofronov and the Catholic monk of the Benedictine Holy Cross Monastery in Chevetogne (Belgium) Father Jerôme Leussink. From December 1939 to the beginning of the 1940’s, Leussink studied icon painting with Sofronov in Rome. The article is based on archival materials of the Holy Cross Monastery, in particular on Leussink’s letters to his abbot. They show that the relationship between the teacher and the student quickly developed into a genuine cooperation, and then into a deep mutual respect and friendship. The author emphasizes that Pimen Sofronov not only conveyed but also revived the Old icon-painting tradition in Europe and in the New World, across boundaries between Churches. This was made possible by the help of his numerous students and friends in Paris, Prague, Rome and America.

Fifty years have passed since the publication of the first translations of Witkiewicz. Today, the number of translations and the languages in which his work functions is more than impressive. Plays, novels, theoretical dissertations, and philosophical treatises have been translated into 25 languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Italian. There have been over three hundred productions in twenty-six countries and sixteen exhibitions of paintings, portraits and photographs have been organized in ten countries. There are several factors that have turned out to be decisive for Witkiewicz’s international fame.