Eugeni Noormägi 1903–1988 Composition with Figures. 1960

Eugeni Noormägi is one of those Estonian women artists who remained largely unknown, despite her work deserving far greater recognition. A major reason for this is her departure to the United States as early as 1926, after studying with Ants Laikmaa and later at the Pallas Art School. As an artist working abroad, her style developed very differently from that of her contemporaries in Estonia, a difference that became especially striking by the mid-1940s. In Soviet Estonia, socialist realism was demanded, and those who did not comply risked losing at least their jobs, if not more. Eugeni Noormägi, working abroad, was free from all such creative chains and had already reached a colorful, optimistic, and life-affirming form of abstraction by 1948. In one interview, Noormägi described her style as characterized by “cubist depictions of experiences in a blue-and-yellow palette.”