Spring 2022

… and suddenly the whole world has changed, in the blink of an eye, beyond recognition. An era has irreversibly come to an end.

We had put together a very interesting issue in which we talk about both contemporary art and recent art history by focusing on the first musealization attempts of Estonian art in the 2000s and comparisons with earlier decades. There are also thematic special pages dedicated to Estonian neo avant-garde hero Tõnis Vint (1942–2019) who would have turned 80 on 22. IV 2022. But then…

On 24. II 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, shaking the foundations of the global security architecture. Estonia, which shares its eastern border with Russia, is protected as a member of NATO and the European Union, and is taking every opportunity to help Ukraine, a large Eastern European country with a population of about 40 million, which is not a member of NATO or the European Union.

But concerns about what steps the Russian president with the nuclear button in his hand may take next are probably shared by every person living and breathing on this planet, and hoping to see tomorrow despite the putinist regime. The climate crisis, the coronavirus crisis and the various identity policies that have dominated cultural and artistic life across the globe in recent years have reduced to secondary issues since the outbreak of war, as we are all with the Ukrainian people in our thoughts now.

So was the late Leonhard Lapin (29. XII 1947–28. II 2022) during his last days, always a passionate man. Artist, architect, theorist, professor, author, poet and much more – a creative mind who was already a legend in his own lifetime. “With Lapin, an entire era has finally come to an end,” we could just as well say without even a hint of false modesty. Goodbye, 20th century!

The man whose “fingerprints” can be traced back to pop art of the 1960s and the first local happenings through to conceptualism and postmodernism was, among other things, a great admirer of Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935). Take, for example, his print “Black Square” (1980), completed well before the end of the occupation, under the “fertile” conditions of Soviet censorship and Russification.â– 

Lapin himself has written about Malevich in KUNST.EE (2015/2) as follows: “His parents were Polish and his first trip outside the Soviet Union in 1927 took him to Warsaw. Born in Kiev, Malevich had close ties with Ukraine and he considered himself a Ukrainian artist. He has never called himself a Russian artist, although this is something Russians would very much want.”

Andreas Trossek

â–  Front cover:
Leonhard Lapin
Black Square
1980
Intaglio, 41 x 40 cm
Art Museum of Estonia