Similarly to other members of his generation, Aren also moved about on a broad scale both geographically and substantially in his artistic quests. Born in Viljandi County, he moved on to Tartu, Narva, St. Petersburg, Tallinn, the Crimea, Vienna, Munich, and so on. In the period of the independent Republic of Estonia, Aren worked as an artist in the theatre as well as an illustrator, a caricaturist, an interior designer, and a painter. He fled to the USA during the Second World War. The best-known chapter of Aren’s oeuvre is his Expressionist paintings from the 1920s.