Beauty of Colours. Golden Age of Estonian Art from the Enn Kunila Collection

One role in viewing early Estonian paintings might be that of a surprised person. The first thing that we might allow ourselves to be surprised by might be the question of why people started using colours to depict the forms and impulses around them, inside them and elsewhere? 

The colours do not directly reproduce the shades seen in nature but have turned more abstract and blended on the canvas, saying more about the artist’s emotional and mental state or conceptual viewpoint. The colours based on nature have thus taken on additional meanings and have become independent of nature in a certain sense, still rooted in alder brush or a river bend but now in the service of visualizing artists’ psychological, emotional and other states. 

This is a catalogue of the exhibition Beauty of Colours. Golden Age of Estonian Art from the Enn Kunila Collection which takes place at the Estonian National Museum 19 February – 2 October 2022. The catalogue contains 70 reproductions of paintings and an article A brief history of Estonian painting. Notes and reflections based on the Enn Kunila Collection, written by Eero Epner.