Peeter Allik 1966–2019 Pigs. 2006

Peeter Allik was a graphic artist with a distinctive sense of humor and a highly personal visual language, capable of combining social critique, irony, and references to art history. His works are never abstract, but always driven by a narrative or storyline.

Allik depicted the motif of a woman and a tiger on several occasions, playing with the contrast between tenderness and brutality. His student Toomas Kuusing has described him as follows:

“In September 2001, this very man struck me with a bang and left me speechless for hours… that was my first encounter with his work and with him. At the time, I did not yet know that this man was the rock’n’roll of Estonian art. Elvis, the Rolling Stones, and Lemmy in one person. A bear, the Devil, and a White Horse on a chessboard. A backpacker walking along the roadside, a Genius and a Superstar across seas and oceans. A man who mastered dream chess. He carved himself a mighty throne out of linoleum and boots that are too large for most.”

“Pigs” may have been inspired by Allik’s rural childhood. There, he encountered an agrarian environment that he later transformed into a social grotesque in his work. He himself has recalled his youth, among other things, as follows:

“They did try to lure me onto the wrong path. They wanted to train me as a tractor driver at the Puurmani school. I went to the exams three times. In the end, they gave me the license on the condition that I promised never to drive a tractor.”