ABSTRACT
The author of the only monograph on Estonian expressionism, Ene Lamp, characterizes her book as a collection of “short discourses” and stresses in her introduction the absence of a grand narrative of expressionism in Estonia. The development of Estonian modernism has been variously characterized by notions of “belatedness,” “accelerated development,” “hybrid character,” and “self-colonization.” The discontinuity of the development of Estonian expressionism reveals that it was only a brief moment in the local art scene and not supported by strong international artistic relationships. The lack of an art museum or an art academy also affected the education of artists and the establishment of modern art in Estonia. The rhetoric of breaking with tradition and the idea of a rebirth of humanity and society, central to expressionism in Germany, was unpopular in Estonia in the mid-1920s; the development of an independent state required something quite different: an ideology of stability and constructive headway.
