Ilmar Kruusamäe

A little-known painting of 20-year-old Ilmar Kruusamäe from the MZ production of the German motorcycle factory. Although such motorcycles hardly rode on the streets of Tartu in 1977, it was rather a foreign advertisement that came into the hands of the artist. Similarly, an advertisement for a German car BMW seen in a magazine made him paint a BMW, with the blue-black-and-white colour code having importance there. If the meaning of colours is important to the artist, then the yellow-black colours of this motorcycle appear in nature as warning colours. So, a young man living and studying in Tartu in 1977 dreamed of a German engineering with a chic design, driving which would create adrenaline. Ilmar Kruusamäe belongs to the top of Tartu’s photorealism, and this painting is probably one of the earliest examples of this.