The postwar years were difficult for Eduard Kutsar, and he was able to focus on his art only intermittently. In October 1944, he moved to Elva and later began working at the local children’s milk kitchen. Despite life’s hardships, Kutsar continued painting and even participated in a few exhibitions. His works became smaller in scale, but his thematic range did not narrow: he painted landscapes, still lifes, flowers, scenes of labor, portraits, and more.

In the same year, 1947, Kutsar’s work came under criticism from the authorities, accused of failing to conform to socialist realism. He remained faithful to his existing artistic ideals: for him, color had intrinsic value, his brushwork was lively and dynamic, and he was more interested in generalization than in detailed representation. “I am a tree that does not wish to be pruned,” Kutsar wrote in 1945.