Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Oil on canvas. 1969.
Signature: V. OHAKAS 69 / 133 x 188 “Keskpäev”

Valdur Ohakas (1925-1998), who celebrates his centenary this year, managed to avoid themes imposed by the authorities for most of his creative career, and even after returning from a prison camp, he dared to cultivate art that was extremely modern for his time. Experimenting with different styles was characteristic of Ohakas’ work in the 1960s, but such a magnificent symbolistic result is a rare discovery.

“Noon. People need flowers,” which belongs to her golden creative period, introduces Ohakas as a talented monumental painter. The work, divided into three motifs, deals with the desire of the new urban landscape consisting of high-rise buildings for living nature. In the area between the flower field and the city, there is a ground combined with various geometric and more abstract paint surfaces, on which three women are engaged in planting, more precisely, the planting of a beautiful life. In Ohakas’ case, it naturally carried hidden messages of hope for a once-again free Estonian state, as he sometimes told his closest friends at his home in Merivälja.

Through the use of major colors, the painting conveys festivity, movement, joy of color and, of course, a playful experimentation with form. Ohakas at his very best!

Text: Harry Liivrand, Katre Palm