Mystics and Moderns: Painting in Estonia Before Glasnost August 24, 2011

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became an important center for underground art in the late 1960s. Turning to painting, artists revived the European painterly origins of Estonia's avant-garde past. Painting allowed artists to assimilate or reject contemporary trends from the nearby West. They adapted Pop, Conceptualism, hard-edge abstraction and Minimalism to a unique culture of nationalist opposition to Soviet power -- a culture that gave birth to the 1980s National Awakening. 'Mystics and Moderns' draws on rarely seen works from the Dodge Collection to celebrate that opposition, demonstrating the variety of approaches to painting during the waning Soviet rule.