August Albo 1893–1963 Winter Landscape. 1950

August Albo was a versatile artist who painted, sculpted, and drew caricatures. He emigrated at the age of 29, living in Germany, France, the UK, and the US. If in his youth he was avant-garde, later he began to paint realistically and almost hyper-realistically. This winter landscape is quite rare in the history of Estonian art, concentrating as it does on a snowy white landscape. The artist has been working somewhere in the mountains and this allows the different shades of snow to be conveyed: the white in the background is different from the white in the foreground. Albo has skilfully constructed the composition, as a bubbling green stream in the centre of the painting enlivens the landscape and dramatises the gently flowing landscape.