Nikolai Triik

Nikolai Triik is a celebrity of the Estonian art, without who it would be impossible to describe the beginning of the 20.century. From time to time have come out some works from his later creative periods and on themes, being of secondary importance to the artist, but “Perseus” is exactly that Triik, who has been written into the art history of the 20.century. This is an early Triik, being at his creative peak and being carried by the most innovative moods. His creative energy is fresh and free from any kind of routine. His approach is in direct contact with moods that were spreading at the same time in Europe. His themes are novel, his painting skills brilliant.
Ene Lamp has written a study of expressionism in the Estonian art. This study, handling one of the most important trends of the 20.century, brings to the fore the importance of the creation of Nikolai Triik. “With pathos and tension,” writes Lamp, “is depicted here a suffering man, suffering in the abstract, existential meaning”. Lamp claims that the push towards expressionism was given to Triik by his staying in Berlin for a couple of years, where he got acquainted with German art, but also experienced himself helplessness and poverty. Still Lamp writes that this trend was expressed in the creation of Triik already before Berlin. (This is also the reason of the wide scale of dating of “Perseus”). More probable is still the belonging of “Perseus” rather into the later period, when Triik accomplished several small-size compositions. Similar is also the testing technique, as the result of which is assumed that maybe Triik planned to develop them later in large works. Here can already be detected the specific features of Triik’s expressionism: it does not deal with social criticism, but as Lamp puts it – “Triik’s small compositions develop the motif of a man in half a symbolist-mythical shell”.
One can get a hunch of accumulation of tensions, man has been given “to the mercy of powers stronger than him”. Also such mood is prevailing in “Perseus”– a skilful work joining jugend, symbolism and expressionism, which has also been born from personal sufferings, telling us about that period, humiliation, despair. In the first range it is a rare art historical discovery. It is something that is hard to repeat. Nikolai Triik. The creative peak. A discovery