Anton Starkopf. Legend of Estonian Sculpture. From the series “Classics of the Modernist Era”
Location: 3rd floor, B-wing
Anton Starkopf’s (1889–1966) oeuvre had a significant impact on the development of Modernist sculpture in Estonia in the 1920s and 1930s. Starkopf introduced novel subject matter and treatment of figure, influenced by German Expressionism, into Estonian sculpture. He was also one of the founders of the first national art school Pallas in Estonia in 1919. Starkopf made an enormous contribution to raising a whole generation of pre-war artists.
The exhibition consists of nearly 70 sculptures and 80 drawings from different art collections. A more comprehensive overview of the artist’s work in Tallinn was most recently displayed at his personal exhibition in the Tallinn Art Hall in 1961. The current exhibition represents all of Starkopf’s different creative periods, and works of art carried out in various materials. Visitors can admire an Expressionist sculpture from the 1920s, elegant Art Deco bronze sculptures, monumental granite work, and sculptor’s sketches from Starkopf’s youth. A part of the exhibition is a film made about the sculptor in 1966, and a slide show of grave markers and monuments made by him.
Anton Starkopf was born on 22 April 1889 in Harju County. In 1911–1912, he was educated in the field of art in Anton Azhbé’s art school in Munich and in 1912–1913 in free academies in Paris. When World War I broke out in 1914, he was interned in Dresden. Starkopf managed to get additional training as a helper in stonecutters’ workshops and, beginning in 1917, he worked in the studio of Franz Metzner in Berlin.
In the years 1929–1940, Starkopf headed the Pallas art school. As a long-term professor, he taught numerous well-known Estonian sculptors. In the 1920s, Starkopf began creating erotic-symbolist forms typical of early German Expressionism, both in drawings and sculptures, but also completed Realist portraits. In the second half of the decade, the traces of Expressionism in Starkopf’s work were replaced by a more decorative Art Deco approach. Starkopf’s 1930s works in granite are characterised by closed composition and a lively, generalising treatment of form. Starkopf created numerous commemorative monuments and grave markers with a strict architectonic structure and additional reliefs or figures.
In the years 1944–1950, Starkopf worked as a sculpture teacher in the Tartu State Art Institute, and in 1945–1948 he was also the headmaster of the school. In 1950, Starkopf fled the Stalinist repression, moving to Moscow, and found employment in the studio of Sergey Merkurov. Returning to his homeland in 1954, he dedicated himself to free creation. Starkopf passed away on 30 December 1966 in Tartu.
Curator: Ahti Seppet
Co-ordinator: Juta Kivimäe
Graphic design: Külli Kaats
