why did I start making sensual graphics?
Towards the end of the Soviet era our friends always wanted to get two things from abroad - art books and “Playboy”s The latter were especially forbidden in the USSR. The punishment of having them could get the guilty person kicked out of the USSR Artists’ Union - which meant you would be denied access to buying art supplies that were sold only in a special art store.
So I looked at those “Playboy”s... No! There was nothing about the mystery between a man and a woman, no primeval desire between the partners, no subtle enigma. Estonian actor, screenwriter and director Rain Tolk: “A man should experience the magical attraction of a woman during a longer period. More important is what the woman decides not to share.“
Man and woman are like two miraculous molecules. Once they have both achieved the primeval feeling that touches their senses deeply, they fit together naturally like two particles in a cell of life. Like the Sea and the Wind.
Estonian writer ja gallerist Piia Ausman: “Aili Vint was one of the bravest and most strong-minded women in the 1960s, not afraid to contradict the current political situation. She belonged to the group ANK´64 together with many famous authors of today. She was an active and innovative participant who always kept her identity. Today we know Aili Vint as a marine painter with an exceptional sense of colour and light, but the beginning of her creative career was luminous in many ways, carrying the hippie spirit of that day. The touch of eroticism in Aili’s is hidden into the images, but still obvious, flickering through her graphic pieces and gouaches quite casually and conspicuously, sometimes in feminine spite, dwelling rather convincingly in her art space. Even in the seascapes.
Estonian art historian Nina Ziterova, while curating my solo exhibition in Kadriorg Art Museum in 1980, has said: ”The main principle of the works of Aili Vint is the male and female element and the attempt to unite them.”
series of colored etchings „Variety Delights“
My series of colored etchings, „Variety Delights“, is made up of fragments found on a photo of a female nude, with the help of a mirror. The pieces vary in their different forms, sizes and colors - in a natural light shade of human body. The naturally light shade of the human body was chosen for just that effect. In etching technique, the zinc plate reacts with the light zinc printing color and adds a grayish tone to the flesh colour in the more deeply etched places. The result is a two-coloured print made with one colour. As the workload using this technique is big, the process is time consuming and each print is hand made by the artist using different colours, the number of copies remains relatively small. All this increases the value of a single print.
NB! Abreviation t.p.l.a. under works means “printed by the artist”.
Open Collections. The Artist Takes the Floor 2019, Kumu Art Museum
Estonian Art Museum invites visitors to walk through a forest of art history and sees to it that the walk is a meandering journey, taking museum-goers from main paths to enjoyable side trails which have not yet been fully assessed and categorised in art history. In inviting the artists, the curator considered their creative profiles with the aim of involving different media.
Several invited artists made the initial choice of pieces of interest based on the electronic museum database MuIS and the digital collection of the Art Museum of Estonia, which was followed by actual work with the collection. The works of art on exhibit cover the period from the 17th to the 21st centuries.
