Leonhard Lapin
(1947–2022)
Old Tallinn V. 2004
Lithograph. Km 38.2 x 36 cm (framed)
price 1 700
Stylised graphic view of the Old Town. Leonhard Lapin, as an architect-educated artist, was sensitive to observing the processes and policies of public space and intervening, if necessary. Here, Lapin has translated the medieval Old Town – the photographs of which were mainly distributed on touristic postcards as something romantic and mysterious – into a modernist minimalist pictorial language where everything superfluous has been removed from the visuals. Triangles and circles that emphasise the vertical dimension come to the fore, as well as more complex geometric bodies. Towers aspire like needles or spiritual antennas towards the sky. However, the whole view opens from the window, in front of which there is a terrace. Leonhard Lapin’s studio was located in the Art Hall on the outskirts of Freedom Square, and his daily connection with the Old Town was close. It is a view from the inside, from an artist whose life had grown up with the Old Town.