Ceramics, mixed media
Not listed as a cultural monument

Ants Vares (1940) graduated Tartu Art School in the department of scenic design in 1958. As was custom at the time, the graduate was sent straight to work – Vares became the artist of the Saaremaa Community Theatre, which resided in what was Kingissepa Cultural Centre at the time.

The artist has depicted Kalevipoeg, carrying on his shoulder the ship that shares its name with a plane, and next to him Linda, carrying rocks onto her husband’s grave, as if already in the next scene, in the tone of the influential severe style of the time. Such a depiction method dominated during the Khrushchev Thaw, in its attempt to distance itself from the celebratory Socialist Realism while still sticking to the themes of the previous era, such as physical work and the formula “socialist in content, patriotic in form”, due to the circumstances. The artists using the severe style felt out possibilities to borrow expressive devices from early 1900s modernism, and even in the case of this composition we can sense hidden allusions to crude expressionism. Furthermore, the image displays a lot of characteristic elements of what set the tone of visual culture in the sixties: the synthesis of different materials and techniques, a generalising approach, and laconic choice of colour.

The airport terminal was opened in 1962. Archive photos show that the waiting hall was furnished with Bauhaus-like modernist metal “pipe furniture.” How such furnishings came to be in the airport is unknown but the whole thing may have left quite the modern impression at the time. The precious pieces of furniture have gone missing in the course of numerous renovations but the pannel stands boldly to this day.

Gregor Taul