Johannes Greenberg

One of the most important works of Johannes Greenberg’s oeuvre, which Hilja Läti, one of the most profound scholars of Greenberg’s oeuvre, found it necessary not only to mention in Greenberg’s monograph, but also to reproduce. It is also one of the few works in the history of Estonian art that deals explicitly with the mood of the 1940s, speaking of mourning and deprivation with the seriousness of Kristjan Raud. The work’s interesting composition has placed the people in the lower part of the painting, and the allocation of a large space to the sky makes them smaller and more defensible. The plot of the painting is not overly literary, the details are barely distinguishable in Greenberg’s use of colour, and only the most important part of the narrative is conveyed: the state of mind of the people. The desolate mood, which is enhanced by the nuanced use of brown tones, is not hopeless, however – the mourner is not left alone, Greenberg has also painted a group of people who may not be able to actively support the mourner, but are at least present and there, apparently even mourning.
Johannes Greenberg’s sensitive nature was able to perceive with astonishing accuracy both the details of colouration, appreciating the peculiarity of each brushstroke, and the details of the sadness of the human spirit. While in the 1930s he often concentrated on theatrical motifs, in the 1940s these are replaced by a different mood, where people step off the stage into real life and experience real emotions. For Greenberg, depicting the accentuation of the times was inevitable, because he could not have done otherwise. Although the painting is almost monochrome, it speaks of the richness and nuance of the human spirit.
The work was part of the collection of artist Olga Terri, whose work was influenced by Greenberg’s paintings.