Geometrical Man - Estonian Art innovation

Exhibited at the Kumu Art Museum, the works from the Estonian and Latvian national collections and those of private collectors provide a survey of the history of the development of the Group of Estonian Artists, Estonia's first group of avant-garde artists. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated book in Estonian and English.

The Group of Estonian Artists (EKR) was established in 1923. The EKR was the first group of artists in Estonia focused on the avant-garde. Its most active creative period was in the 1920s, when many outstanding cubist-geometrical works were created in the fields of painting, graphic arts, stage arts and sculpture, as well as book and applied design.

"For the artists in the Group of Estonian Artists, works of art were independent organisms, which were based on the mutual relations between lines, colours and surfaces," Liisa Pählapuu, the exhibition curator said. "The artists' semi-utopian objective was a wish to reshape the everyday environment; instead of national boundaries that isolated people, they searched for that which was common to all humankind."

Paintings by almost 60 of the most important EKR artists – Jaan Vahtra, Eduard Ole, Friedrich Voldemar Hist, Juhan Raudsepp, Felix Randel, Märt Laarman, Arnold Akberg and Henrik Olvi – are included in the exhibition, along with the works of other artists who shared similar creative ideas. The exhibition includes more than 50 works of graphic art and drawings.

Nineteen of the paintings on exhibit were produced by the members of the Group of Riga Artists – Oto and Uga Skulme, Romans Suta, Aleksandra Beļcova, Niklāvs Strunke and others – who were associated with the EKR.