Download and fill out the attached form and forward it to haus@haus.ee. For consultation or in case of questions, please get in touch.
.png)
Dear Art Lover!
We have now moved on from painting to printmaking in presenting the works that will be featured in the auction.
Aino Bach (1901 – 1980) was among the most beloved Estonian female printmakers, who studied under both Nikolai Triik and Ado Vabbe. She was among the most talented creators of Pallas in the area of intaglio printing, but also skilled in monotype, already achieving success before the Second World War. During the war she lived with the artist collective of Yaroslavl, Russia, and after the war in Tartu and Tallinn. Her favourite topics were workers and intelligentsia and contemplative female types, who represented either a trade or were observable as an independent idea of something poetic, even “utopian poetic”, if going by the legendary art critic Boris Bernstein.
On the picture: Aino Bach. Portrait of a Girl. 1976
For example, Bach’s anonymous nude created in aquatint, a glowing muse facing away from the viewer, is a frequent participant in auctions; a symbol of pure softness. Her slightly lowered gaze and tilted head do signify a certain elusive poeticism. In its own way, the poeticism is present in Bach’s much later work, The Portrait of a Girl (1976), but in a much more earthly form, evoking the image of the work In the Kitchen (1935) by Kaarel Liimand, the painter husband of the printmaker. The talented artist couple could endlessly find amazement in portraying Debora Vaarandi, but their real talent was revealed when they captured the similar elegance in mundane scenes.
Bach lost her partner to the war. What she gained from the war was his mastery in capturing the human soul. “In the 30s I worked with figures and much less with portraits. But during the war I started to see what I could not even imagine before, I become interested in people, their internal lives and tragedies,” reflects Bach in 1974 on how her style evolved. The portrait of a girl drying tableware originating from that period is one of the latest milestones of this journey, one that is processed and felt even more profoundly.
Haus Gallery’s spring auction will be held on Friday, 27 April at 7.30 p.m. Auction works can be viewed in the online catalogue and also at Haus Gallery.