A Czech Contribution to Estonian Avant-Garde

On 31 August the exhibition “Geomeetriline inimene. Eesti Kunstnikkude Rühm ja 1920.–1930. aastate kunstiuuendus.” [Geometrical Man. The Group of Estonian Artists and Art Innovation in the 1920s and 1930s.] was opened in the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn. This retrospective of the activities of the Estonian avant-garde group brought together 60 paintings and 50 drawings by prominent representatives of the Estonian avant-garde (Jaan Vahtra, Eduard Ole, Friedrich Voldemar Hist, Juhan Raudsepp, Felix Randel, Märt Laarman, Arnold Akberg and Henrik Olvi), as well as works by members of the Riga Artists Group from Latvia, whose oeuvre was an important springboard for Estonian Modernists thanks to exhibitions by the Riga Artists Group in Tartu and Tallinn in 1924. The close connections between Estonian and Latvian artists (Romans Suta, Aleksandra Beļcova, Niklāvs Strunke) is evidence of a different kind of artistic communication than the traditional relationship between the centre and the periphery. In this case the link is rather between one periphery and another, although in the traditional way of thinking it could be said that Riga became the centre, as the works of art produced there had such a strong influence on Estonian Modernists.

Attached file: Geometrical Man_Lahoda.pdf