Valve Janov 1921-2003 Hiina roos. 1981

In the present auction choice works of three artists have been joined in the section “classics of the modern art”. Different artists, different meanings. When Helga Jõerüüt is telling us a story of an artist, who after having changed the profession still continues to deal with art and is able to find her way between different trends, then Olev Subbi is a painter par excellence – painting is his real thing. Valve Janov in her turn is an artist, who while having concentrated on painting, does not get tired of looking for the possibilities to renew it. But the fates of Subbi and Janov are also characteristic to the 20.century Estonia. Subbi was sent to exile and he received the possibility to study art only after eight years. Valve Janov belonged to the so-called Sooster group, where she together with other Tartu artists strove for art that could hardly have been called the official style.The aspirations of Valve Janov were of course different. While working as an artist, she still had to take into account the sharpened attention. Differently from Jõerüüt she was an artist, who did apply for avant-garde approaches, new angles of vision. Together with the friendly circle of other artists also Janov was among those, who brought new air into the Estonian art at the beginning of the 1960ies. It had different influences, but Janov developed a clearly personal handwriting. It included among others also two favourite motifs: moon and fishes. Also the “Chinese rose”, which is in the first place a bouquet of flowers, resembles by its shape a fish. But instead of recognizing of the object even of greater importance is the comparison of Jõerüüt and Janov on the art historian scale. Undoubtedly Janov is here more important, but her meaning has started to come out of the shell only recently. By the 1960ies the center of art life had clustered into Tallinn and works by Janov rarely ended up at the most important exhibitions. Therefore she worked in the atmosphere, where she was not being constantly watched by critical glances and she was not pressurized by the thirst for new paintings. “Chinese rose” shows such the degree of absorption that could have been expected from Janov. Differently from Jõerüüt, she does not dash to paint her first impressions onto the painting, but she works slowly and thoroughly. Already the background of the painting has been elaborated in a subtle manner, creating complicated geometrical forms. But the example of Janov’s creative and technical skilfulness is to introduce there glowing sharp colours and creation of a modest general impression with red. Here a classical still-life becomes a pretext of trying new solutions, but still the outcome resembles the classical one: powerful, unforgettable, unique and unrepeatable.