Hilda Kamdron’s drawings on view in the Kumu Art Museum

As of 14 November, the exhibition of Tartu-themed works by Hilda Kamdron (1900‒1972), Vanishing of a City: Hilda Kamdron’s Drawings as a Trauma Narrative, is on display in the project space on Kumu’s 4th floor. Kamdron’s black-and-white drawings will be presented in two phases. Until 12 January, visitors can view her works from the World War II period, capturing, with terrible accuracy, scenes of war-torn Tartu. From 21 January onward, the exhibition will shift to her 1960s drawings, in which Kamdron turns a critical and sad eye on the construction of Annelinn, Tartu’s new modernist housing estate.

This is the first time that Hilda Kamdron’s art is being shown in Tallinn. The works on display come from the Tartu City Museum’s collection. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive catalogue featuring contributions from Enn Lillemets, who has explored her work and brought it to public attention, as well as from Andres Kurg, Linda Kaljundi and Eero Epner.

This exhibition by a lesser-known woman artist broadens the range of themes and artists in Kumu’s permanent exhibition of Estonian Soviet-era art, Conflicts and Adaptations. Kamdron’s poignant drawings evoke the profound sadness and disorientation experienced by a person facing the devastation of war and the relentless advance of modernisation.

Hilda Kamdron’s education was sketchy until 1922, when she was admitted to the Pallas Art School in Tartu, the only institution in Estonia offering professional higher education in the arts at the time. She studied there, with interruptions, for more than 20 years. Her student work was appreciated for its precise and delicate detailing: she depicted banknotes, playing cards, documents, photographs and so on with great accuracy in watercolours. However, art critics were lukewarm about her work and did not recognise it as art.

In later decades, Kamdron mainly created encyclopaedic illustrations for universities, museums and journals. After World War II, she withdrew from the art world and henceforth only exhibited in amateur exhibitions, where she showed a series of robust collages. After World War II, she experienced mental distress and lived a life of poverty and solitude. Before her death, she burned many of her works. Thus, only a few of her works survive in state-owned collections today. One exception is the Tartu City Museum, where the artist’s niece donated a couple of hundred drawings of Tartu.

The exhibition is being curated by Eero Epner and was designed by Siim Hiis. The graphic design is by Kätlin Tischler.

The exhibition is part of the Kumu Art Museum’s permanent exhibition Conflicts and Adaptations: Estonian Art of the Soviet Era (1940–1991). The exhibition is open until 2 March 2025.