Archive

"Mart Org — An Artist With Three Home Shores"
September 21 — February 2

In the course of the mass flight of 1944, an estimated 80,000 people left Estonia. Among them was 9-year-old Mart Org, who fled via Kihnu to Sweden with his mother Leida Org, his father Märt Org the timber merchant, and sister Mai. The first leg of the five-day voyage on rough seas took them from Pärnu to Kihnu in an open fishing boat while Pärnu was being bombed and smouldered in the background, painting the sky red. In Kihnu, the family waited for a white steamboat, which did not come, and eventually managed to trade grandmother’s golden watch and other prized possessions for seats on a feeble two-masted sailboat

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. After being thrown around by strong autumn winds, the escapees finally made it to a refugee camp in Loka Brunn and from there on to their first place of residence near Örebro, where they earned their living by growing strawberries.

Settling in a foreign land, the family had to rebuild their lives from scratch both socially and economically. For pragmatic reasons, Mart Org’s parents were not very happy to learn about their son’s artistic calling and desire to study painting at the university. Despite the opposition of his mother and father, Mart Org, having become a Swedish citizen in 1953, began studying art at the Stockholm School of Applied Arts, specialising as a drawing teacher and decorative painter. In 1955, he studied at Signe Barth’s School of Painting, whose other Estonian alumni include Ilon Wikland and Enno Hallek. After that, he enrolled at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Art (1957–1962) and began an active period of exhibitions in the city.

Although the 1960s in the West were marked by the triumph of popular culture, and contemporary artists were enthralled by pop art, abstract art, and minimalism, Mart Org was rather fascinated by traditional painting techniques; his incontestable sympathies lay with pre-war French painting. Org’s paintings have been compared to Pierre Bonnard’s works that likewise focus on interiors, everyday scenes, and sensitive brushstrokes. His interiors frequently feature a person—most often the artist himself going about his daily business, usually sitting behind the easel. His favourite model was his friend Helga, also a painter, with whom he took creative trips to Gotland and later also to Italy.

Gotland has been a cherished place in Org’s work as well as life. The artist himself has explained this with homesickness. For him, Gotland’s nature and landscapes were reminiscent of Saaremaa, and staying at an artists’ farm there he always felt at home. Although Org was well-received as an artist in Stockholm and some of his paintings also feature urban landscapes, he was perhaps fond of depicting nature, in which he sought familiar and homely patterns associated with Estonia. Mart Org divided his life between three countries—Estonia, Sweden, and Italy; ‘home’ and ‘sense of home’ have been central keywords in his art. Org’s work should indeed be approached biographically—he loved to paint themes and people close to his heart, but also various nuances of different cultures that fascinated him abroad. He was also captivated by existential subjects such as life and death.

Mart Org’s first personal exhibition took place in 1966 in Stockholm’s Gallery De Unga, followed by an exhibition in the reputable Gummeson Gallery, a venue that has displayed works from such world-famous names as Warhol and Kandinsky. The first exhibition was praised by reviewers. Likely inspired by her son’s success, Mart’s mother Leida Org also discovered her talent for art; her large textile appliqués likewise soon made their way into renowned galleries. The high quality of the works of both the mother and the son is attested by the fact that King Gustaf Adolf bought some for the royal art collection.

Although the young artist had a promising career ahead of him in Stockholm, art stipends provided Org with the opportunity to discover the world outside Sweden. Thus, painting trips to Italy became a part of his creative process. There, Org got to know the landscapes of both Tuscany and Northern Italy as well as the grand architectural and cultural heritage of Rome. Due to his fascination with the country, the artist decided some years later to buy a house in Apricale. Thus began a 40-year period of life and work in a small mountain village on the French border, which was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the landscape and genre painter. He continued living and working in Apricale until 2006.

Currently residing in Stockholm, the artist has not lost his connection with his birthplace Pärnu. Memories of Pärnu have a special place in his works. Even several decades after leaving, Mart Org depicted the windows of his family home on Mihkli Street. Collages inspired by the childhood home that the artist exhibited in Avangard Gallery in 2016 were later donated to the Pärnu Museum.

In the same year, the artist expressed his wish that the whole of his life's work would one day find a home in the Pärnu Museum art collection. This summer, the wish was finally granted on the initiative of gallerists Marian and Jan Leo Grau — around two hundred works by Mart Org and his mother Leida Org made their way to the Pärnu Museum. The arrival of this voluminous collection in Pärnu on the 80

^th

anniversary of the mass flight was also the occasion for the current exhibition.

Marian and Jan Leo Grau, Indrek Aija

Mart Org, Henrik Fergin, Urve Sopp, Reigo Kuivjõgi