Eduard Ahas
(1901-1944)
Kaks pead. 1941
Coloured chalk, coal, pastel, paper. Vm 34.5 x 28.7 cm (framed)
Starting price 704 (sold)
The work by Eduard Ahas could be one of the most powerful standpoints in the art of the 1940ies. Even though this has been painted with a decisive hand, by clearly stressing the contourse and adding more decisiveness to the portraited person, the additional dimension to the work is added by the background of the model and the author. Ahas is depicting here his brother, Enn Ahas, the prototype of the main character of “Nimed marmortahvlil” (“Names on the marble plaque”). But the meaning of the work is doubled in the context of the 1940ies by the fact that also Eduard Ahas himself fought both in the War of Independence and in the 1940ies against the Red Army, being killed three years after the accomplishment of the work. This is a general portrait of an ethical face of a family, where even three brothers participated in the War of Independence and two of them received the Cross of Liberty. It was a daring, but also the only possible deed to make such portrait in the year 1941.