Eesti kunsti oksjonid

Lithograph on paper. 1987.
Signature: “Veneetsia I” lito 28/50 / MVint ’87

Mare Vint (1942-2020), with her uniquely delicate style, made her first lithograph in 1973, having previously focused mainly on pencil drawings. Subtle, contrasting and tightly controlled, Vint’s style is instantly recognizable. The artist herself has named Rene Magritte and Caspar David Friedrich as her role models but has also said that she was mainly inspired by travel, not other artists.

Having been blacklisted by the USSR for a long time, Vint finally got approved for a tourist visa in the late 1980s and undertook a long-awaited trip to Western Europe. During this inspiring journey, she saw England, France and Italy for the first time, the latter of which impressed her the most and from which, Vint created her famous Rome and Venice series of prints.

Venice has inspired countless artists over the centuries but while these works of art typically highlight the city’s colorfulness and chaotic energy, Vint, on the contrary, removes all worldly boundaries and lets the chosen scene breathe peacefully. Gentle, confident, structured down to the smallest detail and calming — “Venice I” is definitely one of Mare Vint’s greatest successes.

In the documentary film about Mare Vint, made under the direction of Peeter Urbla in 1989, Viivi Luik says: “This morning I looked at two of Mare’s Venice views. I would say that they are landscapes tamed by man — in these views, there is no randomness, no passion, no wildness and no people. And there could be no people in them because then they would lose their perfection, they would become random. Suddenly, something would be lost and turn into something that is not characteristic of this artist.” (ERR: https://arhiiv.err.ee/video/vaata/mare-vint)

Text: Kaspar Allik