Andres Tolts

The painting of Andres Tolts, who was only 19 years old at the time, having graduated from high school number 46, refers to the airport, an institution that can function on the basis of super-precision professionalism. In the same year of 1968, the international bestseller ‘Airport’ was published, authored by the British-Canadian writer Arthur Hailey (translated into Estonian in 1980). Based on the novel, a movie of the same name was also made. In general, Andres Tolts, together with his classmate Ando Keskküla, were better than average familiar with the pop culture that was making young people crazy in other parts of the world, thanks to their high school art teacher Ludmilla Siim. In the painting, a woman with a rather dull state stands in profile. The woman on Tolts’ painting is working, could she be a dispatcher? In the Soviet Union, that is, in the society and art of that time, a person was valued only if they worked. However, the figure evokes a number of other connections, for example, with Lembit Sarapuu, who painted a dispatcher at the train station in profile and who was influenced by Renaissance Italian paintings instead. However, perhaps everything is much simpler with this painting? Perhaps a teenage artist wants to convince himself and everyone else that a moment of takeoff has now arrived in his own life, and a flight to a new level and becoming an artist lies ahead?