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Konrad Mägi

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Konrad Mägi
Konrad Mägi (photo c. 1898–1905)
Born
Konrad Vilhelm Mägi

(1878-11-01)1 November 1878
Died15 August 1925(1925-08-15) (aged 46)
NationalityEstonian
MovementExpressionism

Konrad Vilhelm Mägi (1 November 1878 – 15 August 1925) was one of the first modernist painters in Estonia and the Nordic countries, at the core of whose creative legacy are visionary landscapes. He only worked for sixteen years, yet the total volume of his oeuvre is estimated to be around 400 paintings.[1]

Numerous exhibitions of his works have been held in Estonia, and in recent years, his art has been discovered in Europe: in 2017, there was a solo exhibition of Konrad Mägi’s paintings in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome; in 2018, his works were displayed at the exhibition Wild Souls: Symbolism in the Art Of the Baltic States in the Orsay Museum; in 2021, more than a hundred of Mägi’s works were exhibited in the EMMA Museum in Espoo, and in 2022, the same works were displayed in the Lillehammer Art Museum.

Konrad Mägi’s works are particularly appreciated for their vigorous and impulsive colours and a pantheistic approach to nature, making him unique in European early-20th-century modernism. Mägi worked in different parts of Europe, according to which his oeuvre is divided into rather dissimilar chapters: Denmark, Norway, France, the island of Saaremaa, southern Estonia, Italy etc.

The reception of his art went through various periods, too. In the 1920s and 1930s, Konrad Mägi’s oeuvre influenced a large part of Estonian art created at the time. During World War II, his art was condemned (the Soviet authorities ordered his works to be removed from exhibitions, his letters to be destroyed, etc.); it continued to be forbidden until the second half of the 1950s. Towards the end of the 1950s, as political austerity relaxed, Mägi’s oeuvre was “re-introduced” and several retrospectives were held.[2]

Despite the fact that Mägi spent the majority of his life in towns, his oeuvre mainly revolves around landscapes: environments lacking humans, where nature offers irrational, mystical, metaphysical and religious experiences. Konrad Mägi’s oeuvre is rooted in existential tensions that made him yearn for other potential worlds. As a young man he took actively part in the revolutionary movement, but later withdrew completely from politics and focussed entirely on art. “Happiness is not for us, sons of a poor land,” Mägi once wrote. “For us, art is the only way out, because when the soul is filled with the eternal suffering of life, art will provide what life cannot give us. There, in art, in one’s own oeuvre, can one find peace.”[3]

In addition to landscape paintings, Mägi painted portraits (including several portraits of members of the women’s movement) and still-lifes. He was the first director of Pallas, the first Estonian higher art school.

Konrad Mägi’s health seriously troubled him throughout his creative career: various illnesses led to a rapid deterioration of his health in the 1920s. Konrad Mägi was only 46 years old when he died. The whereabouts of more than half of his works are still unknown.[4]

Biography

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Childhood

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Konrad Mägi was born on 1 November 1878 in southern Estonia. He spent his childhood in the small village of Uderna near Elva, which was surrounded by large virgin forests and had a big railway line passing through it. His father, Andres Mägi, was a comparatively well-to-do estate manager, who took actively part in the Estonian national awakening movement in the second half of the 19th century. Practically nothing is known about Konrad Mägi’s mother, Leena Mägi. Konrad Mägi was the youngest child in the family: he had four older brothers and an older sister; another older brother had died as a child. The first name Konrad was possibly chosen because German names were popular among the Estonian rural population at the time. In Uderna, he attended the local elementary school for barely a few months.[5]

Something must have happened to Andres Mägi’s mental health:  he began changing jobs increasingly often. That led to the dissolution of the family: at the age of 11, Konrad Mägi moved to Tartu with his mother and sister.[5] In the autumn of 1890, Konrad Mägi began to study at the three-year elementary school of the Tartu Apostolic Orthodox Church, which he quit after only a couple of months. A few years later, he enrolled in the Municipal School of Tartu, but never finished his studies there either.[5] Instead, he became a carpenter’s apprentice at the local furniture factory. A few furniture designs from that period have survived.[5]

Discovering Art

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In 19th-century Estonia, fine arts were something that mainly Baltic-Germans had access to. The indigenous rural population did not see much art, not to mention creating it. Nevertheless, towards the end of the century, various cultural activities emerged, including an interest in art. Konrad Mägi and his friends became actively engaged in physical culture and sports, but were also interested in theatre, literature, philosophy and classical music.[5]

In 1897, Konrad Mägi was employed by the Bandelier Furniture Factory, where he was entrusted with making complicated rosettes and volutes. Because of the factory owners’ wish to improve the quality of their products, Mägi and other employees were enrolled in Rudolf von zur Mühlen’s drawing classes. There, Mägi studied perspective drawing as well as technical drawing and possibly had his first encounters with painting.[5] In 1902, Mägi decided to go and study art at the Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing in St. Petersburg.[4]

Travels

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St. Petersburg

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Konrad Mägi arrived in Saint Petersburg in January 1903 to study sculpture under Amandus Adamson at the Stieglitz school. His studies were successful, and he met several other Estonians aiming to become artists, including Nikolai Triik. Nevertheless, he was not happy with the technical and rather dry approach to drawing at Stieglitz. When sculpture department was shut down a while later, Mägi gradually lost his interest in studies. He is known to have actively visited museums and to have been most of all fascinated by the works of Mikhail Vrubel and Nicholas Roerich.[4]

When the revolution of 1905 broke out, Mägi participated in the events: he is said to have organised several provocations in churches and even to have aided revolutionaries in caching their weapons.

Mägi collaborated with several political publications in Estonia by sending them satirical illustrations with a symbolic undertone. There was a student strike also in the Stieglitz school, and one of the organisers may have been Mägi. He refused to continue his studies in a backward school and was dismissed. He went on to study in the studio of Jakob Goldblatt and also began to teach art lessons, but in April 1906 he left St. Petersburg.[5]

The Åland Islands and Helsinki

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"Åland Motif", 1906, oil on canvas, Enn Kunila Art Collection

Mägi was 27 years old and had not completed a single work of art, although his urge to become an artist was increasing. After leaving St. Petersburg, he decided to spend the summer of 1906 with his friends in the Åland Islands.[4] Fascinated by the romantic surroundings and following Nikolai Triik’s example Mägi took up painting for the first time. There are known to have been several painting sketches in his rented room, none of which have been preserved.[6]

There is only one extant painting from the Åland period.[7] It has very few of those characteristics that later became representative of Konrad Mägi’s style. Mägi finally managed to work consistently, being inspired by nature, and this pattern of living in a town and painting in the countryside characterised his lifestyle from then on.[4]

In September 1906, Mägi and his friends left Åland for Helsinki, where Mägi studied for a short period at the Ateneum drawing school. He also started giving art lessons to Anni and August Vesanto, who soon became his friends and patrons. Anni Vesanto sold Mägi’s watercolours in her tobacco shop, but the income Mägi received from it was insignificant.[8] He mainly earned his living by rewriting Estonian folk songs, and as soon as he had put aside a sufficient sum, he decided to travel to Paris at the end of August 1907.[5]

Paris

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Mägi’s first period in Paris lasted from September 1907 to the spring of 1908. “I’ve been in Paris for two days. I did not like Germany at all. Their technology was fantastic, but their stupidity was even more fantastic. France is completely different, the French themselves are truly likeable. Paris is an interesting city. There is a lot of art here to see. Overall, I like it here, although I only had a few francs in my pocket when I arrived,”[9] Mägi wrote two days after arriving in Paris.

In Paris, Mägi initially stayed at the sculptor Jaan Koort’s place, but later moved to the artists’ colony La Ruche. He studied drawing at the independent institutions of Académie Colarossi and Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

Mägi frequented exhibitions, but was hardly fascinated by modernist art. “Of course it does not make matters better: you can often see such rubbish there that it is pointless to talk about it,” he later wrote about Parisian art exhibitions.[9]

It is presumed that Mägi still did not paint at that time because of a shortage of money. “All the money I had, which was not much, of course, I spent on tobacco and paper (tobacco is horribly expensive and bad), leaving nothing for material,” he wrote to August Vesanto.[4] It is, however, possible that he did paint, but the paintings have simply gone missing.

In the winter of 1908, Nikolai Triik arrived in Paris from Norway, and at the instigation of Triik, Mägi also decided to travel through Copenhagen to Norway for the summer and to return to Paris in the autumn.[5]

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ Epner, Eero (2023). Konrad Mägi. Seninägemata maalid. Tallinn: Konrad Mägi Sihtasutus. p. 16.
  2. ^ Eero, Epner (2018). Konrad Mägi. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum. p. 19.
  3. ^ "Letter to August Vesanto from 16 December 1907".
  4. ^ a b c d e f Epner, Eero (2020). Konrad Mägi. Tallinn: Eesti Kunstimuuseum. p. 19.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Epner, Eero (2017). Konrad Mägi. Tallinn: OÜ Sperare. p. 205.
  6. ^ ""A. Vaga, F. Tuglase, J. Genessi ja G. Suitsu mälestused Konrad Mäest"".
  7. ^ ""Åland Motif", 1906, oil on canvas. Enn Kunila's art collection".
  8. ^ Erelt, Pekka (31 March 2011). ""Ootamatu avastus Konrad Mägi elust"". Eesti Ekspress.
  9. ^ a b "Letter to Peeter Rootslane from 22 September 1907".
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