Letters from Estonian artists
Agathe Veeber’s letters to Endel Kõks
Spring 1946
Unfortunately, I have been unable to work for over half a year due to the Wiesbaden camp. I have been living here since October; before that I was in another terrible camp. Here in Wiesbaden, I lived until February in a room where there were 10 other women, I was the eleventh. I only had a sleeping place; all my Indian ink and papers were under the bed and my clothes hung next to the bed on the wall. The surroundings were the worst… Now I have a small separate corner in a room one can walk through; during the day people walk through it…This whole environment is disgusting to me and I cannot work.
In the fall I got an attic room in town at the home of some Germans, but because of the lack of fuel for heating I have not been able to work there. The scraps of heating material I could get were expended on spending a night or some hours there away from camp life.
The Germans I have met, a few artists, that is, have held my work in Estonia in quite high esteem. Therefore, a professor in the industrial arts school here promised to loan me a stone and let me use their graphics press after Christmas. However, I have not gone there because I am afraid I will spoil my work if I start printing it in a bad mood. I also have no paint or good paper. There hasn’t been any great hurry…
Would it be possible for me to find a quiet room by myself in Geislingen where I could work? Believe me, Kõks, I suffer a great deal when I cannot work; life seems so foolish and empty; it is worse than ever before in my life.
Please let me know right away whether I could get some good graphics paper through Geislingen.
***
Obtaining paint and paper is impossibly difficult. I don’t know where I will be able to make prints. The Estonian representatives have the worst attitude toward my efforts; what is the point of all this striving and who needs art anyway! I myself am interested in all of it now, but for how long, I don’t know. I fear falling into apathy. You, Mr Kõks, are energetic, try to do everything you can for art.
***
Mr Kõks, sometimes (or often) I need a kind word, that is all…
Greetings, Agathe Veeber
Hans Tsirk
Fall 1946
I was good at drawing in high school, but fearing that my interest in drawing would turn into a passion, when I entered university, I avoided everything connected with art. In 15 years I did not visit a single art exhibition nor did I pick up a pencil or a piece of charcoal.
Now I cannot imagine my life only as a doctor. As a doctor I obtain rich material and inspiration which is reflected in my art. Just as I deal with a living person as a doctor, in my art I prefer figural composition and, recently, portraits.
Often I am not interested so much in the content aspect of a picture as in the quest for form. Now I am experimenting with whether one can convey the impression of colour with charcoal.
I try to achieve my effect in the raw and by sketching, without boring into the details. I set as my example the words of a famous artist: “Drawing consists more in leaving lines out than putting them on paper”.
Because of the shortage of time, I draw only with charcoal. Charcoal is a material that one can work with at any time, even at night or in the evening …and to interrupt one’s work at the drop of a hat without the work suffering for it, as it would with water colour or oil.
The figures in my drawings are sad, though this is unintentional. Contrary to the way I express myself in art I am a person with joie de vivre.
Endel Kõks’s letter to Karin Luts
Spring 1947
Of late my mood keeps approaching zero. Perhaps the same is true for many others. To illustrate my working conditions here, it is enough to mention the fact that all of the hundred or so of my recent works that are worthy of consideration have all been painted on paper – from newsprint to stationery. I have not been allocated a single brush or tube of paint.
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Those who have a good income are those who paint boxes and wooden plates – their products sell well. However, for every painting we artists sell we can only buy a pack of cigarettes.
My wife and I have lodgings in an attic room with a floor surface area of 12.48 square metres – and this doubles as my studio.
Let it be added that the ceiling surface area is about 3 times less. In the winter we truly freeze. And yet we are in a privileged position with regard to space, because the norm is 4 square metres per person.
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My health is no longer what it was. As far as supplies are concerned, the most important item I have received is a coat made from a blanket, good for wearing in the dark. Based on my vocation and trade I am in the ninth category to receive supplies; the tenth category consists of “everyone else who is left”.
All of that is the sadder side of my present life.
The happier side, of course, is the lively intellectual life that I take part in. French and German exhibitions, museums which are being put back in order as time goes on, journalism from the free countries, the likes of which I have not seen since the year 1940.
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The Geislingen artists’ colony has expanded a good deal of late. Agathe Veeber, Hans Tsirk, Hilda Mikkelsaar and others are living here. Up till now there have been over 30 art exhibitions in Germany either organised by or with the participation of Estonians.
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Now I think I have gotten almost everything off my chest. I would be happy if you wrote to me a little. And I would also be glad to receive an art book or two.