Lembit Sarapuu 1930–2024 Patarei Sea Battery. 1959

A rare painting from Lembit Sarapuu’s early creative period. One can already see Sarapuu’s characteristic style of painting, in which forms are clearly and strictly separated from one another, but the subjects and colours are rather cheerful and optimistic. It also testifies to a certain loosening of painting restrictions in the late 1950s and to artists’ search for greater freedom.
Separately, of course, it is worth wondering about the motif. The bright hues conceal the character of the building: it is a prison and we see both barbed wire and a guard booth. It should be noted that Patarei Prison also held political prisoners, many of whom had been shot, and so the work is politically charged and even dangerous. Above all, however, Sarapuu seems to be looking for a contrast between freedom and prison: we see the open sea and birds flying free in the high, bright sky. A parallel picture of the former USSR emerges, where society was like a prison, but the human soul still yearned for freedom.