Ardo Sivadi 1900–1966 Männid.

The work by Ardo Sivadi could belong according to its style to the beginning of the century, to approximately the same period with Ants Laikmaa’s “Capri maastik” (“Capri landscape”). The Jugend-style pine trunks have not been painted by a person resting in a resort, they have been painted by an artist with a concrete vision. Sivadi does not stylize the pines and their trunks just by chance: differently from many others, he does not see on the trees romantic evening light or light brownish shades, but in the first range he can see their forms. Slender, tall, straight, bold – exactly these traits are being emphasized by Sivadi’s stylization. With especial emphasis on these characteristic traits, he seems to be talking not about pines anymore, but he is talking in a wider sense (e.g. of the symbolism of ship masts) or even of human characteristic traits. Sivadi has elegantly joined in his “Männid” (“Pine-trees”) also the two art deco sources – Jugend and the angles of constructivism.