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War Refugees

Ado Vabbe (19.03.1892-20.04.1961)

1944-1950
Oil on paper
54 x 68 cm

"War Refugees" was probably completed during the war years or immediately after the war. Like many people, Vabbe personally experienced fleeing from war. During the last years of the war, he had to change his lodgings many times with his little son. The fact that the men depicted in the painting are in German uniforms adds controversy to the subject, for which reason the exposition of the exhibition was impossible during the Soviet era and thus the work is also unsigned.
"War Refugees" is painted on paper, which can be accounted for by difficulties in obtaining more expensive base materials as well as by the fact that the improvisational nature of Vabbe’s creative style also contributed significantly to such a choice.

Portrait of a Man. Karl Ormisson
Nude with Bandaged Hand
Female Nude Standing in Greenery
Old Village Women Conversing
Construction Workers
Sheep-Washers
On the Lakeshore
War Refugees
In the Studio
Painters
Red House
In the Loge
Portrait of Alvine Käppa
Portrait of a Woman
Portrait of Aino Suits
Portrait of a Woman
Self Portrait
 

War Refugees

Ado Vabbe (19.03.1892-20.04.1961)

Ado Vabbe was one of the most innovative artists in Estonian art from the 1910’s to the end of the 1920’s, whose name is among other things associated with the advent of futurism, cubo-futurism and expressionism. Vabbe’s abstract works are also known. Studying and working in Germany and Russia in his youth, he arrived back in Estonia in the latter half of the 1910’s, where he worked as a teacher for decades at different art schools, including Pallas. His significance in Estonian culture is founded on his avant-garde work, for which reason innovative cultural groupings maintained close contact with Vabbe until the early 1920’s.
Vabbe’s style changed in the mid-1920’s. He withdrew from active life in art and continued working as an art teacher. Henceforth he painted impressionist works inspired by natural settings. In the 1940’s, Vabbe was subjected to persecution by the Soviet regime that occupied Estonia and for some time he lived in true destitution. Beginning in the 1950’s, however, his former position was gradually restored. Regardless of this, Vabbe never became a widely and officially accepted artist during the Soviet era.