Love in Strasbourg - Eduard Wiiralt’s (1898-1954) Paris Collection - by Mai Levin
10.09.2009
Love in Strasbourg
Eduard Wiiralt’s (1898-1954) Paris Collection
This collection of Wiiralt’s works, which the Finnish composer Juhani Komulainen came across in Paris, makes as again focus on the first period of the artist’s stay in Paris – the years 1925-1933, when almost all of the works in the collection were created. The selection of works allows us to assume that the collection in question once belonged to the artist’s friend Nelly Stulz. They were involved romantically from 1931 to the spring of 1933, when the affair was ended by the physical and mental crisis Wiiralt suffered from. The affair is fixated by two portraits of Nelly Stulz in the collection, as well as a few nude drawings (1932). Nelly Stulz (1892-1969) was a notable woman, remembered to this day. She was a well-known artist in Strasbourg and an art collector, as well as musician and a poet, who arranged the selling of Wiiralt’s works in Strasbourg starting from the 31st of January the latest, and also put together his solo-exhibition in May, 1932, in the local gallery La Librairie de la Mésange.
Wiiralt spent the summer of 1931 in Strasbourg, where he was visited by the artist Jaan Grünberg. Together they traveled to Vosges and Colmar, where they were deeply impressed by the Isenheim Altar, created by Matthias Grünewald, in the Unterlinden Museum. In the same summer of 1931 in Strasbourg, Wiiralt created one of his best-known works – Cabaret (etching, copper engraving), the dry point engraving Lying Nude (the model being Nelly Stulz), the monotypes Lying Nude and Sitting Woman (both in the Art Museum of Estonia). It is possible that the cathedral of Strasbourg was the impulse for Wiiralt to create the engraving Painter. On commission by Nelly Stulz’s brother, Doctor Edgar Stulz, the artist made a picture of Saint Vincent de Paul, which inspired the birth of a whole series of drawings depicting saints ( 1931- 1932), which in turn is linked to the lithography Preacher (1932).
The collection also includes Wiiralt’s sketches, which were made in 1926 in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and in 1929 in Antrain, Bretagne, as well as a series of fantastical portraits in Paris. The collection also holds several charming sketches, among which the sketches of the couplet Hell (1930-1932, etcing, copper engraving) - Cabaret are particulary interesting. Apparently Cabaret inspired the artist to finish his fantastical engraving – which he had started in 1930 – in the summer and autumn 1932. One of the most refined works in the collection is the colorful drawing Violinist (1931-1932). The violinist’s figure – which for Wiiralt represented the force of creativity – is also depicted in an early watercolor painting (1919), in a draing within the series of Antrain (1929), on two monotypes (1931. all in the Art Museum of Estonia), but there are several versions that have remained unknown to us. The self-portraltal Violinist and the collection in whole would also have remained unknown, had not Juhani Komulainen had the wit to acquire it at an auction in Paris. After that he acquired four more works in Paris and one – The Bayaderes – in Genove. His collection includes about ten prints and the rest is made up of drawings, watercolor paintings and monotypes – a unique material, which holds abundant ties to the well-known part of Wiiralt’s heritage.
Mai Levin
Art-historian
Eduard Wiiralt - CV
Eduard Wiiralt was born on 20 March 1898 in Gubanitsa parish, Tsarskoje Selo district, St Petersburg province, to Anton and Sophie-Elisabeth Wiiralt, who worked on the Robidets estate. The family returned to Estonia in 1909 and settled in Varangu manor in Järvamaa. Between 1915 and 1918, Wiiralt studied at the Tallinn Arts and Crafts School, and in 1918–1919 took part in the Estonian War of Independence.
He participated in the first overview exhibition of Estonian art in Tallinn in 1919. In 1919–1924, he studied sculpture and graphic art at the Tartu art school “Pallas”; after that he continued his studies in sculpture in 1922–1923 at the Dresden Art Academy.
In 1926–1939 and 1946–1954 he lived in Paris, 1939–1944 in Estonia, 1944–1945 in Austria and Germany, and in 1945–1946 in Sweden. He was buried at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
His works are in Tallinn and Tartu art museums, the Paris National Library, the Vienna Albertina, the Stockholm National Museum, the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki, the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, etc.
PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS
1929 in Helsinki, Paris, Lübeck, Kiel and Königsberg
1930 in Köln and Copenhagen
1932 in Strasbourg
1933 in Marseille and Warsaw
1935 in Moscow, Amsterdam, Brussels and Cleveland
1936 in Tallinn, Tartu, Krakow, Warsaw, Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and New York
1937 in Riga, Kaunas, Helsinki and Vienna (golden honorary medal from the Vienna Art Society)
1939 in Johannesburg, Roma, Warsaw, Strasbourg, Amsterdam and Antwerp
1943 in Kaunas
1944 in Vilnius and Vienna
1946 in Hamburg
1947 in Freiburg, Gottingen and Marburg
1950-51 in Goteborg
1954 in Stockholm
1958 in Tallinn
1959 in St. Petersburg (the State Russian Museum)
1960 in Vilnius
1973 in Tallinn
1993 in Helsinki
1998 in Paris and Tallinn
2008 in Tallinn
2009 in Helsinki
 
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