ESTONIAN ART, PART I

THIS TIME: ART AND LITERATURE

Curator: Piia Ausman

Haus Gallery has, over the years, consciously curated its art auctions, seeking ways to better present and interpret artworks for both collectors and exhibition visitors. We have presented works in chronological order, by decades, or connected them through themes, genres, and techniques. This time, however, we allow ourselves a slightly freer approach, intertwining art and literature.

The diverse and vividly experimental selection of the 2026 Spring Auction is divided in the catalogue into chapters inspired by aphorisms of Estonian writers.

The works across the three auctions are organized into eighteen creative units, where each literary fragment adds its own mood and interpretive space to the art. Beneath these aphorisms, works created in different eras and techniques meet, opening up both art and literature simultaneously—at times in unexpected and surprising connections.

The reader and viewer are invited to engage with the auction works through a personal lens, as well as through the interplay of meanings we propose. The catalogue includes aphorisms by authors such as Lennart Meri, Jaan Kross, Hasso Krull, Doris Kareva, Betti Alver, Tõnu Õnnepalu, and Anton Hansen Tammsaare, among others.

Each individual work is also accompanied by texts by our art historian Eero Epner, which further expand the conceptual dimensions of the auction pieces. Thus, we invite you to experience art in a slightly different way—notice how visual art and the written word enter into dialogue, creating new layers of meaning while leaving room for personal interpretation.