At Keila-Joa castle, patrons are introduced to the most distinguished and reputable local artists, whose works manifest the durability and quality of Estonia’s top art. These are creators who started out as capable and avant-garde thinkers in the 1960s and whose creations continue to be relevant, bearing the signs of experience and professionalism, and conveying messages about general human values.

The series of exhibitions will be opened by Toomas Vint (1944), known both as an artist and as an author, whose career as a painter has lasted for nearly half a century. Toomas Vint has carved out an important place in the local art world, with creative output that cannot be tied to any specific trend or movement. Attempts to interpret Vint’s works use terms such as intellectual naivism, trans-avant-garde, metaphysical painting, Magritte-like surrealism, etc.; he himself, on the other hand, refers to his work as conceptual landscapes. Toomas Vint has been awarded many art and literary prizes, including the Konrad Mägi medal (1986); Friedebert Tuglas short story prize (1979, 1984, 2012); and international recognition in the form of a New York Art Expo certificate (1988). His works have found a place in the collections of many art museums in Estonia and elsewhere.

The paintings by Toomas Vint displayed at this exhibition are those that are instantly recognisable in the good sense; fascinating in their precisely composed details, where each straw and angle of light has been given serious thought. He is an analytical painter, to be sure; however, his analysis results in a painting that has a metaphysical effect, a spiritual experience of the ideal landscape where everything seems pure and eternally inviolate. This phenomenal fineness of detail has held art critics in awe and cast a spell over the audience. But what does Vint aspire to accomplish with his works? What is his deeply personal challenge as an artist? A good artist’s work is always more or less personal – it could not be otherwise. The landscapes he depicts – greenness of the summer or the light cast by the setting sun on pine trees in Nõmme – are seen through his eyes, shaped by the author’s fantasy into a mystical hint at an unreal, albeit very believable place somewhere in the expanses of the world, in the consciousness of mankind, where nothing is littered by the noises of the ever-changing world. Toomas Vint’s “not-from-this-world” landscapes rise above the ordinary landscape and feel almost like metaphors.

Although Vint sees the landscape as a means to convey “something else”, he does not disregard the landscape per se. For Vint, the landscape is, on the one hand, an opportunity to “word” his fantasies, nightmares, dreams, ideas, concepts and the like. On the other hand, the landscape has always been, for him, an opportunity to explore elusive phenomena such as the mood created in the light of the night, the mystical atmosphere of a foggy landscape, the situation created by a line of trees, the architectonics of the sky, etc. Despite his apparent coldness, Vint is a romantic, or more accurately it is not a romantic that speaks in his landscapes but rather a passionate human being. And this is a passion for landscapes, metaphysics, and paintings.

All the works displayed at the Keila-Joa castle are for sale. Haus Gallery plans to showcase about ten great authors throughout the year. For an art collector, if just one favourite painting is chosen from each exhibition, the result would be a beautiful collection of the top artists of Estonia, embodying both value and sentiment.

Curator of the exhibitions: Piia Ausman +372 52 77 334, piia@haus.ee