Vive Tolli
(1928–2020)
View from Toompea. 1979
Etching. Plm 22.8 x 22.6 cm (framed)
price 700
Vive Tolli’s view from Toompea down to the roofscape of the Old Town and the tower of St Nicholas Church represents a different aesthetic compared to Leonhard Lapin’s lithograph Vana Tallinn V (Old Tallinn V) (2004), which is up for auction. First and foremost, Vive Tolli has portrayed the Old Town as a humane environment. For the artist herself, the city is entirely her OWN. The view is softened by the brownish, retrospective colouring and the ‘bubbling sky’ achieved by etching, as well as the foreground’s flocks of trees and flowers with their petals blown by the wind. The imagery is warm, a little fairytale-like, as is typical of the artist. Vive Tolli has been embraced as the ‘mother figure’ of Estonian graphic artists, a teacher whose birth year was earlier and who carried the profession forward in difficult times, making way for the young.