EXHIBITIONS

11.06. - 27.09.2020

"Fairy-tale beauty and the associations a person lives through during his development"

Kaljo Simson (1929–2017) was an artist of the universe and a colour shaman. Naive art as a phenomenon irritated him.

Kaljo Simson graduated from the Estonian State Art Institute in Architecture in 1970. However, he did not realise himself as an architect, but as a painter and an inventor. From early 1970s, Simson earned living by making portraits of children at kindergartens. In total, he made thousands of portraits over several decades.

It is difficult to view Kaljo Simson’s life separately from his creative work. His works did not fit into the mainstream Soviet Estonian art or the adapted western art, that is, alternative art.

Kaljo Simson looked for ideals elsewhere – the universe, and the perfection of skills and striving for fairy-tale beauty became his criteria. The art of the universe was reflected at its best in his philosophical series Profile of the Eye, of which nearly all works are displayed in the Kondas Centre.
This exhibition introduces the extraordinary life, the underrated works and the estranging artist’s position of Kaljo Simson, and seeks to get rid of quite a few stereotypical attitudes of the 1950s–1980s approach to art in Estonia.

The exhibition was supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

The Kondas Centre is grateful to Helena Trei, daughter of Kaljo Simson.

Mari Vallikivi

4.06.-29.07.2020

"Metaphysical Viljandi". Paintings by Hanno Härm

Hanno Härm (1952) is one of the most interesting among Viljandi artists. The works gathered to the exhibition are mostly from private collections and they depict silence: the town is deserted, even the sun is not shining, the wind is not blowing, the snow is not melting. This dreamlike state recently became a reality in both Viljandi and other cities, but the frozenness in Härm’s paintings lacks the premonition or the reverberation of a catastrophe. “There’s a still life, a beautiful natural moment, wonderful sky in a good dream – everything is beautiful except what was created by man – the technology,” the author has said, describing the magic realism of the world of his paintings.

The exhibition also presents a selection of railway pictures by Hanno Härm. These paintings make up the most intriguing part of his work. His earliest pictures of railways without trains date from the 1970s already, and they required thorough knowledge and precise calculation skills. The artist has equipped some of these with a system, which, when activated, turn on signalling on the painting. As red lights turn on, everything is closed, and silence prevails.

Mari Vallikivi