Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Oil on masonite. 1968.
Signature: IT68 / I. TORN “LAIUD” ÕLI 1968 43×52

Ilmar Torn (1921-1999) from Saaremaa is primarily known as a graphic artist but a separate and exciting phase in his work is represented by his experimentations in oil paints and pastels. Most of them were created in the second half of the 1960s and the rest in the late 1980s and 1990s, both of which offer equal joy of discovery.

“Islets” takes the viewer to Torn’s home in Saaremaa because that’s where he often went boating between the islets with his daughters – he still had the sea and nature in his soul. In this oil painting, he has depicted the small romantic islets he saw on his hikes in an abstract key.

The artist enjoys moving his brush with smoothly curved lines across the painting’s surface, playing with it as if with a map – shaping the deeper sea surfaces into dark blue and the water surface reaching the shore of the islets into foamy white. The resulting visual effect is thus an experience of nature rendered in warm colors, which introduces us to the more poetic side of the artist who usually practiced masculine linocut.

Text: Katre Palm, Mai Levin