On the Path to Light: Hermann Talvik 120
The exhibition is dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of one of the most charismatically idiosyncratic creators in Estonian art history, Hermann Talvik (1906−1984). Hermann (also Herman) Talvik, whose mother was from the island of Hiiumaa and father from the island of Saaremaa, was born in Tallinn, studied art in Estonia, Finland and Paris, and lived and worked in Sweden after World War II. He was one of the greatest philosophical mystics and visionaries in Estonian art. His ecstatic-religious oeuvre based on deeply personal spiritual experience has an exceptional place in Estonian art history.
Hermann Talvik (Truu until 1927) was born on 31 May 1906 in a family with deep-rooted religious traditions. He studied under Eduard Taska in the State Industrial Art School in Tallinn from 1921 to 1926. In 1928 he continued his art studies in the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society in the Ateneum, Helsinki. He studied painting and graphic art there intermittently until 1939, and among his teachers were the renowned Finnish artists Uuno Alanko, Mikko Oinonen, William Lönnberg and Reino Harsti. In the second half of the 1930s, he took follow-up courses in various parts of Europe, travelling in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. As was customary in those days, he then continued his art studies in Paris, working periodically in various free academies in 1936, 1937 and 1938, and studying art history in L’École de Louvre in 1936.
In 1934 Hermann Talvik began displaying his works at exhibitions in Estonia and Finland, and his peculiar creative style particularly garnered attention in the latter. Talvik remained affiliated with the Finnish art scene until the outbreak of the Winter War, after which he returned to his homeland. His idiosyncratic talent was noticed in Estonia, too. A significant moment – seminal for the artist himself – was when Kristjan Raud became one of the first buyers of Talvik’s visionary art in Estonia.
Like tens of thousands of his compatriots, Hermann Talvik fled to Sweden in 1944. There he became one of the most conspicuous personalities in the expatriate Estonian art scene. He was one of the few freelance artists in the expatriate community who also participated quite actively in Swedish art life. His entire 40-year Swedish period was creatively intense and fruitful. Talvik actively displayed his works at exhibitions in Sweden, Finland, Canada, France, Australia and the USA. His works were acquired by the Swedish National Museum, museums in Malmö, Örebro, Göteborg and Karlstad, and by the New York City Library. His oeuvre is also represented in very many private collections.
In the 1950s the artist built a reclusive home in the harsh landscape of Funäsdalen, in northern Sweden but, like several other expat artists living in Sweden, Talvik found a homeland for his soul in southern Europe: he spent long periods in Spain, and built a second home for his family there in the 1960s.
In a conversation with Endel Kõks in Sweden in 1956, Talvik discussed the possibilities of using the language of art to express spiritual experiences more powerful than anything experienced on the material level. He asked: “How could I depict, for example, my perception of God?” Talvik dealt with this issue throughout his creative career, addressing universal and philosophical topics, such as life and death, faith and hope, suffering and salvation, perpetuity and ephemerality. Talvik tried to grasp and depict these not fully fathomable topics through spiritual communion and religious psychological-ethical states, which he rendered in a passionately evocative and masterfully contemporary visual language, often with extremely multilayered meanings.
Hermann Talvik’s works are like endless stories that provide clear references to Christian iconography, while plunging into spiritual depths in the artist’s idiosyncratic system of symbols. His art is filled with tensions, prophecies and ambivalence.
The artist’s ecstatic temperament is visible both in the vigorous symbolism of his prints and in the fiery colours of his monotypes and paintings. Talvik was one of the most fascinating monotype artists in Estonia: his monotype prints encompass emotions inherent in colours, but they also feature diaphanous monochrome lines. Monotype as a technique suited Talvik’s spontaneous, vision-based manner of creation extremely well: it combined the artist’s uninhibited drawing skills with a dynamic and ethereal picturesqueness. This exhibition focuses on Talvik’s monotypes.
The exhibition was organised in good cooperation with the artist’s daughter, Liina Talvik, who has devoted herself in Sweden to collecting works of Hermann Talvik and creating a full database of his oeuvre. Liina Talvik, a writer with a medical education, has written a bulky biography, Hermann Talvik – Life ART Life; the Estonian translation of the book was issued by the publishing house Eesti Raamat for the 120th anniversary of the artist’s birth.
Works displayed at the exhibition belong to the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia and the Tartu Art Museum, as well as to private collections in Sweden and Estonia.
Curator: Kersti Koll
Exhibition design and graphic design: Inga Heamägi