Enn Põldroos’s solo exhibition in Kumu provides insights into the artist’s oeuvre through leitmotifs

On 6 December, the artist Enn Põldroos’s (b 1933) solo survey exhibition Museum of Obsessions will open in the Great Hall of the Kumu Art Museum. The exhibition includes Põldroos’s works from the 1950s to the 2020s. The curator of the exhibition is Anders Härm.

The visual language of the adventurous artist has constantly evolved: from the socialist realism demanded of students at the Art Institute through different modernist and even hyperrealist experiments to surrealism and grotesque depictions of reality. Nevertheless, the exhibition Museum of Obsessions provides insights into Põldroos’s oeuvre through images and motifs that he has remained true to throughout his life and that he has repeatedly returned to at various times in one way or another. “I have repeatedly tried to restart my life, but have always ended up rediscovering the same truths,” is how the artist described his creative career.

The potential outlines of the nucleus of Enn Põldroos’s art become visible to the viewer through reference points and anchor motifs. “In this particular case we are calling those genres and motifs obsessions. For Põldroos, these recurrent obsessive motifs in his art seem to function as anchors amid stylistic whirlwinds and adventures: they hold together the artist’s identity and prevent it from disintegrating, but they also make up the core of his art, seemingly drawing a diffuse polygonal contour around it,” said the exhibition curator, Anders Härm.

“Metallic spheres and crumpled draperies are images that we find in his art as early as the 1960s, but portraits and nudes are among those genres that Põldroos keeps coming back to. The exhibition features ten such obsessions, although they hardly cover his entire abundant creative legacy, which spans over seven decades. One could easily find more,” claimed Härm.

In addition to displaying Põldroos’s oeuvre in “ten acts”, the exhibition also sheds light on his other life: the transformation from the “grey eminence” of the art scene and art policies, one of the chief architects of the “special regime” of art life in Soviet Estonia and the chairman of the Estonian Artists’ Association into a prominent leader of the independence movement and the Popular Front, as well as a politician in 1988–1992.

The exhibition is accompanied by public and educational programmes. The opening programme of the exhibition includes a guided tour with the curator, Anders Härm, on Saturday, 7 December at 3 pm. This will be followed at 4 pm by the discussion circle Enn Põldroos and Estonian Art in the 2nd Half of the 20th Century. Participants in the discussion are the artists Tiit Pääsuke and Kaido Ole and the art critic and art historian Liisa Kaljula; the moderator of the event is the art historian Anu Allas. The Portrait Factory workshop for children and families will take place between 1 pm and 3 pm.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a book which contains articles about the various aspects of Enn Põldroos’s oeuvre and activities by Anders Härm, Eero Epner, Kristi Kongi and Kädi Talvoja. In addition, the book contains a thorough interview with the artist that took place at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.

The exhibition Museum of Obsessions, featuring more than 170 works, will remain open in the Great Hall of Kumu until 13 April 2025.

Curator and exhibition designer: Anders Härm
Graphic designer: Tuuli Aule
Installation manager: Tõnis Medri
Technical assistant: Kaarel Eelma
Coordinators: Johanna Jolen Kuzmenko and Anastassia Langinen

Exhibition team: Richard Adang, Darja Jefimova, Liisa Kaljula, Paul Kuimet, Kaie Kukk, Ketlin Käpp, Maria Lota Lumiste, Anu Lüsi, Renita Raudsepp, Mati Schönberg, Mihhail Staško, Stanislav Stepaško, Laura Tahk, Terje Tammearu, Eva Tammekivi and Madli Valk.