Hugo Lepik 1905–2001 Karjapoiss. 1951

The art-related education of Hugo Lepik embraces unexpectedly much – Estonia and the studies of graphical art, after that already Berlin, Italy, Canada, Finland … After leaving Estonia in 1944, Lepik achieved already a direct contact with the world art, but independence from changing fashion trends left a clearly intimate shadow on Lepik’s creation. His paintings rarely deal with forced subjects, concentrating again and again on familiar city streets, rocks, where took place walks during last summer, a repeatedly admired sea view. Because of this personal dimension, the works by Lepik are sincere and direct, their colour handling and space solution do follow exactly all requirements to skilful painting, but are considerably lighter, even aerial.
In the present work Lepik first of all creates with an impressive lightness a spring atmosphere, joyful and sunny. A glance of a little herd boy tells us at the same time of longing for the childhood, but neither in a sweet-romantic nor a bitter key. Lepik’s work comes clearly to the fore thanks to its extremely optimistic mood. An experience from the herd boy period, which joins most probably all of his contemporaries, allows in its turn to assume that in addition to everything Lepik tells us here also of the yearning for Estonia.