SUMMARY
The artist questions, reflects and writes. The extensive retrospective solo exhibition of Enn Põldroos (b. 1933) at Kumu Art Museum is accompanied by a book that opens with the maestro’s motto: “I have repeatedly tried to start my life anew, yet I always find myself rediscovering the same truths.”
Põldroos, having played the roles of both creator and politician, personally experienced the First Republic of Estonia, the years of occupation and the period following the restoration of de facto sovereignty. For him, the Second World War remains a lived reality.
As an artist, he explores the boundaries between the scientific and the sensory. Gazing upon his 1972 landscape paintings, the viewer feels like they are standing in the grass on a warm summer day, surrounded by a cool mist rising from the earth. “Clearing Beyond the Thicket” has nothing specific to reveal to the viewer, yet it conceals and subtly hints at something that exists beyond.
Two of the most striking examples of his deliberately “unfinished” portraits are “Self-Portrait” (1972) and “Self-Portrait” (1976), which, when viewed side by side, reveal a distinct evolution in style and palette. His portraits do not attempt to correct anatomical distortions, and an “unfinished” face can suggest hidden power dynamics.
Among Põldroos’ “completed” cultural-historical portraits, “Jaan Rääts” (1973), “Portrait of Andres Tolts” (1978) and “Portrait of Mait Summatavet” (1970) stand out as particularly accomplished. Yet his precocious talent for psychological portraiture is already evident in the early works “Portrait of Leo Soonpää” (part of his diploma work, 1958), “Yellow Self-Portrait” (1954) and “Portrait of My Father” (1958).
In “Double Portrait” (1979), he achieves a perfect synthesis of figuration, portraiture and composition, with the subjects’ faces radiating joy and contentment, their open-handed gestures exuding inspiration.
An ever-present and distinctive feature of his masterfully painted portraits is how he positions the subjects’ hands. One example is “Bars” (2015), a self-portrait in which two-thirds of the face is concealed by the artist’s expressively anguished hands, rendered in textured relief.
The fleeting nature of posture is particularly evident in “Jump” (1977), as well as in “Up” (2007) and “Down” (2007), all three of which lean towards chronophotography. In these works, a series of figures in business suits carrying briefcases move through a series of motions in sequence rather than with the continuous flow of time. Their gestures are broken down into phases that are imperceptible to the naked eye but visible through the lens of a camera. Põldroos follows in the footsteps of photographic representation, his work translating its traces into painting.
In “We” (2007), which is built on axial symmetry, Põldroos evokes the optical characteristic of photography. He also plays with the concept of framing. A technique atypical for painting but fundamental to photography and photorealism defines “Autostrada” (1976), as the edges of the composition “cut” through buildings in a small-town view, mimicking how images are cropped in photography. Framed, photo-like compositions also appear repeatedly in works that follow the principle of “image within an image”, such as the early piece “Operation” (1969) and “Credo” (2012) from his later years.
A cinematic undercurrent runs through Põldroos’ work, suggested by his dramatic use of extreme angles and distances. In “Self-Portrait” (2010), a miniature figure, a piece of self-portraiture, is boldly placed at the very centre of a vast canvas, occupying only one-twentieth of the space. It is as if the painter has stepped into the role of a photographer standing “too far” from his subject.
Painters are typically seen as observers who depict the world from the eye level of a standing adult. The advent of photography, however, introduced radical shifts in both still and moving images. One such transformation was the emphasis on perspective – on framing and vantage points in visual representation. A prime example of this is “Starting Position” (2009).
Several of Põldroos’ paintings – such as “Jump” (1977), “Day Off” (1977), “Revellers” (1975) and “Meeting the Victors” (1979) – radiate a bright, almost ultraviolet light. The large number of models and the situations they occupy reinforce their distinctly photographic quality.
Just as Põldroos once stood on Toompea advocating for the restoration of Estonian independence, his unique approach to painting continues to uphold the legacy of the Pallas School. The aesthetics of the Pallas School were foundational to the progressive art of the interwar First Republic of Estonia, standing in opposition to the academic painting traditions of the Russian Empire. This aesthetic resistance was considered integral to republicanism and continues to link Estonian art with cultural diplomacy in Paris – a city that, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, held a leading role in both visual art and legal scholarship.