Reconstructing Art and Architecture: Absorption of the
Legacies of Constructivism in Soviet Estonia in the 1970s
M ari La a neme ts
Institute of Art History, Estonian Academy of Arts, Tallinn
In the early 1970s a new generation of architects was
entering the Estonian art scene: Leonhard Lapin, Jüri Okas,
Vilen Künnapu, and—closely associated with them—the
designer Sirje Runge, who worked on the edge of several
practices1 (Fig. 1). They had studied at the Estonian State
Art Institute and were part of a group of friends who had,
during their studies, developed experimental practices,
including happenings and collective walks, films and slide-
shows next to the more traditional forms of expression, such
as drawing, collage, photography and painting. In their
practice they addressed the new role for art and architecture
in the new living environment and in the society that had
undergone significant cultural, economic and technological
transformations. One important source for the emergence
of the new artistic practices in Tallinn during the 1970s was
the newly discovered legacy of the Soviet avant-garde, and
of Constructivism. In particular, for the work of Leonhard
Lapin—one of the most productive artists of his generation,
and at the same time a visionary leader, who decisively not
only conceptualized the artistic production of the era, but
also aspired to formulate principles for a future artistic and
architectural practice. Constructivist references appear also
in the work of other artists and architects, even if they
remain less reflected and programmatic. The following
article is intended to explore the legacies of Constructivism,
and to describe the relation to it of Estonian artists and
architects in 1970s, which may provide new insights for the
rewriting of the history of Soviet-period art in the region.
Reintroduction of Constructivism in the 1960s
By the 1970s, the Constructivist avant-garde had been
­rehabilitated as the predecessor of Soviet design.2 This
point of view was represented, for example, by VNIITE
(Vsesoiuznyi nauchno-issledovatel’skii institut tekhniches-
koi estetiki; All-Union Scientific Research Institute for
Technical Aesthetics), which claimed to be the inheritor of
the traditions of VKhUTEMAS,3 the institute that played
an important role in the study and rehabilitation of Con-
282
structivism.4 Despite the fact that in this (institutional)
reworking the formal and aesthetic problems were in the
foreground, whereas political aspects tended to get lost in
the process, after decades of ideological art analysis it had,
as Karl Eimermacher has indicated, a truly sensational
effect.5 The rediscovery of the avant-garde at first occurred
in the context of design on the pages of applied arts maga-
zines, for example the specialist journal Dekorativnoe
iskusstvo SSSR (Decorative arts USSR), founded in 1957,
did not extend to the academic high art system. Still, the
rapid changes in the fields of technology and science in the
1960s did exert pressure on dogmatic realism, provoking
discussions about contemporaneity, and on, the role of the
art in society, forcing the art sphere to be opened up to new
notions and volumes, bringing about changes in the concept
of time and space, machines, speed, automatization,
rational­ism.6 This also brought about a revived interest in
Constructivism, which offered a counterbalance to the the-
ory of realism and stressed other functions of art, such as
perception, reviving for example the Constructivist idea of
art as something that shapes and organizes the
environment.7
In Soviet architectural discourse, which differs from
the discourse of art, after the period of de-Stalinization,
Modernism and a technocratic approach to architecture
were officially approved.8 However, rationality and func-
tionality were as often instrumentalized by planning insti-
tutes,9 and became an important tool in the rational
restructuring of lifestyle and culture of living,10 which was
justified with the rhetoric of correspondence to the modern
age,11 but not, for example, with Constructivist principles or
with the Productivists’ conception of nonhierarchical mate-
rial culture.12 In the 1970s, however, the authority of Mod-
ernism in architecture—the rule of the principles of
industrialization and standardization—had reached a dead
end in monotonous suburbs, which the new generation
would address, reviving Constructivist ideas.
Detailed knowledge of historical Constructivism was
not easily available, and in the 1970s Estonia Constructiv-

ism was generally received and understood, mainly through
the work of individual personalities: El Lissitzky, Vladimir
Tatlin, Gustav Klutsis, Alexandr Rodchenko, and Konstan-
tin Melnikov. In 1967 the East German publishing house
Kunst issued a voluminous monograph of El Lissitzky’s
paintings, photographs, book illustrations, exhibition designs
as well as architectural projects and texts13 that was distrib-
uted also in the Soviet Union. Several articles appeared at
the popular youth magazine Noorus (Youth).14 In 1966, an
exceptional exhibition took place in the Estonian State Art
Museum, drawn from the collection of Moscow art collec-
tor Jakob Rubinstein, that included a few Constructivist
pieces, such as Proun (1919) by Lissitzky, two Constructions
by Liubov Popova, and works by Naum Gabo, Olga Roza-
nova as well as drawings by Tatlin.15
At the same time the work of the pre-war Estonian
Constructivist group EKR (Eesti Kunstnikkude Ryhm;
Group of Estonian Artists) was remembered with small solo
exhibitions.16 Most of the members of the group, which was
founded in 1923,17 were alive in the 1970s.18 Also, the Func-
tionalist architect Edgar Johan Kuusik was teaching at the
State Art Institute’s architecture department.19
Constructivism in Estonia during the Mid-war
Period
EKR united the generation of young artists who shared an
interest in Cubism and Constructivism and began to estab-
lish a progressive art movement in Estonia. The main
sources of information and inspiration for this were Mos-
cow and St. Petersburg, and a little later Berlin, art collec-
tions and galleries. Many of the artists of the group had
1 Photograph. “A happening at
the former airfield in
Lasnamäe.” Tallinn. 1974.
From left: Jaan Ollik, Avo-
Himm Looveer, Leonhard
Lapin, Tiit Kaljundi, Kristin-
Mari Looveer, Jüri Okas, Liivi
Künnapu, Vilen Künnapu, Sirje
Runge. Photo: Jüri Okas.
(Environment, Projects, Concepts.
Architects of the Tallinn School
1972–1985. Tallinn. 2008.
134–35)
studied in Riga and St. Petersburg. In his memoirs Jaan
Vahtra mentioned attending the exhibition Tramvai V, the
first Futurist exhibition in St. Petersburg (Petrograd), in
March 1915, which included works by Tatlin, Malevich,
Popova, Puni, Rozanova, and others: “This exhibition pre-
sented artwork that we had still had not seen. A number of
the Constructivist works were made of wood, metal, glass
and heaven knows what else. The overall impression was
enthralling. Here war had been declared on everything
hitherto deemed to be art, and new, extremely bold artistic
truths brought up.”20 Märt Laarman, the theorist of the
group, had contacts with the avant-gardes of Latvia, Russia
and Germany by early 1920s. Edmond-Arnold Blumenfeldt
had studied in Berlin. Arnold Akberg visited Berlin (and
Paris) for the first time in 1927, where he saw the Grosse
Berliner Kunstausstellung with the Constructivist department
in a special show of Malevich’s works.
The group’s relationship to Constructivism was com-
prehensive rather than strict, they did synthesize different
ideas and aspects and the extent the work deals with Con-
structivism varies from simple geometric stylization and
constructive arrangements to inexplicable spatial experi-
ences arising from architectonic modes, for example, in the
work of Laarman. In his foreword to the group’s almanac
Uue Kunsti Raamat (Book of New Art), which can be consid-
ered one of the EKR’s most important theoretical texts,
Laarman spoke of painting (or art work) as a “thing” created
by the artist by adopting strict rules. According to Laarman,
art as such does not provide reflections of things nor narra-
tives. Instead, a picture must become a “thing” itself: the
artist’s task will be to organize, using lines and colors, the
surface of the picture into a coherent whole.21 Other key-
reconstructin g art and architecture 283
words he brought up in connection with the new art were
“synthesis,” economy, collective spirit, decorativeness (not in
its nature but in terms of mission), and “internationality.”22
In spite of Laarman’s direct reference to El Lissitzky’s
and Ilya Ehrenburg’s trilingual magazine Veshch’ / Gegen-
stand / Objet, published in Berlin,23 the work of the group
was rather formal, and addressed issues such as the aspira-
tion towards ‘pure’ form, geometric rationality as an expres-
sion of cosmic laws and harmony, elementary structures of
things, the universally human qualities. The group’s work
remained primarily within the framework of painting, pro-
ceeded from a sense of rhythm, dynamics, balance between
lines and surfaces, as well as from the concept of archi­
tectonics. Constructing what is human through spacial
experience became a recurring theme in Laarman’s ­oeuvre.24
They did not experiment with cinema or photography,
which were popular among Russian Constructivists, but
with book design, which most clearly adhered to the prin-
ciples of C ­ onstructivism with its use of asymmetry of
­sections of text and lettering as the only design devices and
decorative ­element.25 Also the political commitment of Rus-
sian Constructivism—to serve the revolution and the new
society—was foreign to EKR. The group saw its mission in
contributing to the inception of a modern spirit.26
Social and political ideas are to be found, rather, in
­literature—for example, in the work of the left-wing Con-
structivist poet Johannes Vares-Barbarus (a doctor by pro-
fession and later the head of the first communist government
in Estonia in 1940). Vares-Barbarus was seeking new world
and social relationships based on new relationships in
poetry and art.27 In 1924, Barbarus’s collection of poems
Geomeetriline inimene (Geometrical Man) was published
with a design by Jaan Vahtra. Barbarus celebrated the new
technical world, the machine, the dynamics of metropolitan
life. But he was also sensitive to the social problems of soci-
ety, to bureaucracy and corruption. A subsequent volume of
poetry, Multiplitseerit inimene (Multiplied Man), published
in 1927 and again illustrated by Vahtra, has become, along
with Geometrical Man, one of the most important manifes-
tos of Estonian Constructivism.28 The book took ‘move-
ment as its leitmotif, ‘movement,’ not only in space but also
in time—into the future. Barbarus condemned status, which
meant status quo in society. He yearned for a responsible,
organized, creative poetry, the aim of which would be a new
world order, a radical restructuring of society.29
The Concept of Objective Art
Estonian architects, who in the 1970s wrote about Con-
structivism and eagerly promoted it, were Vilen Künnapu
284 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
and Leonhard Lapin, particularly the latter, who would
become the principal apologist of Constructivism.30 Kün-
napu introduced the work and ideas of various construc­
tivist architects such as Konstantin Melnikov and Moisei
Ginzburg. At the same time he also tried to link Construc-
tivist heritage with contemporary practice. For example, he
associated Jüri Okas’s graphic art and space installations of
the 1970s with Constructivism, but considered them
destructive and disruptive, as opposed to the clarity of
Constructivism.31
Lapin’s interest in Constructivism was more profound
and “theoretical.”32 We need to keep in mind that Lapin was
an artist and not a historian, his writings are not aca­dem­
ically rigorous and organized, but energetic, more like
­manifestos than analyses.33 Thus also his definition of Con-
structivism is as historically imprecise as it is erratic, linking
very different ideas.34
During the 1970s Lapin developed a concept of a new
culture that would respond to the transformation of society
in the late twentieth century, and to the renewed relation-
ship between man and machine, as well as to the emergence
of a new artificial environment. The task of the artist in this
context was not so much to represent the new environment,
but to participate in its production. Already in 1971, in a
speech at the Exhibition of Independent Student Works,,
Lapin declared that “the human living environment has
become the central concern for contemporary culture.”35 In
the speech with the programmatic title “Art Designing the
Environment,” Lapin insisted that art must aim beyond the
“beautiful” or the “interesting,” beyond a merely decorative
function, and aim, instead, at the production of a new envi-
ronment, thus requiring a more active type of intervention
from artists: “The artist of today . . . is an architect or a city
constructor. Not by profession, but by his/her attitude
towards the world.”36 The main feature of the new culture
was spatiality.37 Lapin’s proposals for these kind of interven-
tions (contributing to the production of a new environ-
ment}, included the repainting of houses and streets as
well as the organizing of happenings.38 The opening of the
exhibition a few days earlier had culminated with a joint
“happening” in a turn-of-the-century suburb of Tallinn,
where art and architecture students repainted a rundown
playground with a wooden elephant.39
Four years later, Lapin launched his idea for an art prac-
tice of the future that he called “objective art.”40 In a program-
matic speech he presented at the symposium that accompanied
the exhibition Event Harku ’75: Objects, Concepts, Lapin
expanded on the ideas he had been propagating since 1971,
trying to formulate a theory of a new artistic practice. The
non-institutional exhibition Event Harku ’75 took place on
the premises of the Institute of Experimental Biology in
Harku, near Tallinn, in December 1975. The exhibition was
organized by Lapin together with the artists Sirje Runge and
Raul Meel and the physicist Tõnu Karu. The symposium was
officially announced as a meeting between young artists and
scientists. Even though the official subject of the symposium
was conceptualism as the most relevant tendency in contem-
porary art, in presentations more general themes, such as the
crisis in art and the role and function of art and the artist in
society, were in the foreground.41
In his 1975 speech at the symposium in Harku, Lapin
addressed the need to create a new (objective) imagery, a
new aesthetic system, that would be developed in ­accordance
with contemporary industrial reality and technological
progress. According to Lapin, these changes—develop-
ments in industrial production, as well as innovations in
communications technology—made it imperative for artists
to reconsider their practice as they fundamentally changed
not only the concept of art but also the role of the artist.
The (new) objective art, Lapin declared, does not express
the artist’s subjective view of the world, but, instead, moves
“toward a higher level of general ideas, objective structures
and materials.”42 The objective artist, he continued: “con-
structs; his creative process is not so much emotional and
spontaneous as it is intellectual.”43 And: “An objective work
of art is not an imitation of reality, but part of reality, or real-
ity itself.”44 Foremost, art had to regain its social objectives,
such as the production of new environment, and, finally,
solve the problem of the human–machine relationship.45
Crucially, Lapin’s understanding of art as having a
social purpose and as being an investigation of the “visual
structures” of a future world that would make the entire
environment the object of the artist’s creative agency can be
traced back to ideas developed by artists associated with
Constructivism. Lapin’s concept, of course, was indebted to
more than Constructivism, but he employs and synthesizes
various ideas drawn from historical avant-gardes as well as
from more contemporary texts.46 However, the most radical
thoughts and visions, unique in their time, derive from
Constructivism. Moreover, that “objectivity in Estonian
art” was directly related to the advent of Constructivism in
the 1920s and the founding of the EKR.47
In October 1975, two months before the opening of the
exhibition in Harku, where Lapin was giving his speech, he
and his then wife Sirje Runge were traveling to Moscow. The
reason for the trip was the 9th ICSID (International Council
of Societies of Industrial Design) congress under the general
title “Design for Man and Society,” which was held in the
Rossyia Hotel, where the diploma work of Runge was to be
presented (Lapin mentioned this in his speech on “objective
art”48). During their stay they also visited the collection of
Georgi Costakis—one of the biggest private avant-garde art
collections during the Soviet period, displayed in Costakis’s
apartment. Although it was not L ­ apin’s first encounter with
Russian Constructivism, it had a vast and productive effect on
him. Lapin commented on it in a postcard to the art historian
Eda Sepp: “We visited the Russian Constructivist private col-
lection of Costakis.... Astonishing collection, marvelous
experience. Altogether a different impression of Russian art
from the 20s and 30s than literature has so far presented.”49 In
the same year the Lapins became acquainted with the Lenin-
grad artist Pavel Kondratiev, the pupil of Malevich and Pavel
Filonov, with whom they became good friends until Kondra-
tiev’s death in 1985.50
At this point, I should mention that Lapin’s exploration
of Constructivism coincides with his interest in Suprema­
tism. In his 1975 Harku speech, Lapin mentioned Kazimir
Malevich as the “first committed proponent of objective
art,”51 and quoted in detail from Malevich’s book The Non-
objective World (1922). This book was an important source
for his understanding of art, a book, to which he kept
returning.52 Lapin was first introduced to Malevich in 1966,
when he, as a first year student of architecture, happened to
listen to Jüri Arrak’s presentation on the “art systems” of
Kandinsky and Malevich in a students colloquium at the
State Art Institute in Tallinn.53 Although Malevich did not
support the Constructivist subordination of art to practical
objectives, it seems to be the utopian meaning in art that
creates, rather than represents, a new reality, as well as the
belief in the crucial role of creativity and the potential of
imagination in the renewal of society, that both movements
shared and so, for Lapin, do not contradict. According to
him, Malevich—the originator of Constructivist imagery—
actually never gave up objectivity, but created a new type of
objectivity, which was primarily spiritual and corresponded
to the new industrial age.54
Another source that Lapin quoted at length was the
Manifesto of Estonian Constructivism: “Art that entertained
or diversified life is now in charge of organizing life.”55 Laar-
man, the author of the Manifesto, was referring to Lissitzky’s
and Ehrenburg’s preface to the first volume of Veshch’ / Objet
/ Gegenstand (1922), in which Lissitzky and Ehrenburg appeal
to a “constructive art” that “is not intended to alienate people
from life, but to summon, to contribute to organizing it.”56
Furthermore, Lapin continues: “The artist confines his
expression to a set of strict rules and by adopting them joins
the collective.... individualism has nothing to do with new
art. Moreover, we are proud that we do not build on the foun-
dation of what is distinct and singular in a person, what sepa-
rates one person from another, but on the foundation of what
reconstructin g art and architecture 285
people have in common. As a result of this, the new art is
international.”57 This statement is remarkable so far, as a
“personal style” was very important for the restoration of
artistic autonomy and for signaling one’s opposition toward
the official establishment,58 whereas intelligibility and collec-
tivism were official requirements for the new art, and interna-
tionality was its ideology.
At first Lapin’s rhetoric and fascination with technol-
ogy seems not to contradict dominant Soviet propaganda
and the ideology of the scientific-technical revolution. Yet,
a closer inspection of Lapin’s aims shows, that it divergent
from those approaches, that mimicked bureaucratic jargon.
Industrialization in architecture, relying on advanced tech-
nology and engineering, were part of the Soviet Unions
official utopia. In reality, the promise of better living stan-
dards for all was only partially achieved. By the 1970s indus-
trial mass-construction in suburban new towns had become
a “negation of itself,” and was perceived as a rather disas-
trous “product of architectural confusion and unprincipled-
ness.”59 In his speech, Lapin urged artists to investigate new
forms and technologies, new materials and new manufac-
turing techniques, to develop new forms of artistic expres-
sion more appropriate to the transformed new environment.
Crucial was the creation of, not art works, but objects,
things that would become indivisible parts of a new indus-
trial reality.60 At the same, time, Lapin reanimated the Con-
structivist theme of the artist as an “organizer.” But what
did “organization” mean in this context?
The Artist as Organizer: Some Proposals for a
New Environment
In his 1975 speech in Harku, Lapin mentioned Sirje R ­ unge’s
diploma work Proposal for the Design of Areas in ­Central
­Tallinn (1975) as the most significant example of objective
art to date.61 Blending Constructivist aesthetics with a post­
industrial program, the project consisted of eight design
boards investigating the means for reconstructing different
(peripheral) locations—derelict industrial areas, dilapidated
courtyards, disused plots, and so forth, most of which Runge
envisioned turning into a dynamic urban environment.62
The project included three kinds of intervention: First
were urban “decorations” that consisted of repainting the
neglected buildings’ facades with decorative patterns, a
measure that would also help improve the appearance of the
deteriorated courtyards.63 Second, there were to be two
modular aluminum constructions consisting of nodes,
stairs, elevators, levels, boxes that could be differently com-
bined (Fig. 2). Each of these constructions, up to six stories
in height, was equipped with cinema and TV screens, music
286 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
boxes, communal information boards, and kiosks. These
structures were intended not only to fill temporary breaks in
construction, but also to transform the public space, to turn
disused, neglected, or abandoned urban territories into
dynamic points of communication (Fig. 3).64 Runge’s con-
structions reacted to the demands of postindustrialist recre-
ational society and offered inhabitants opportunities for
relaxation and physical recreation. In the cubic, cylindrical,
or spherical boxes, constructed from corrugated plastic,
either painted or polished, one could relax, listen to music,
meet and spend time with friends, or just climb in and
around the structures.65 The third urban intervention envis-
aged by Runge consisted of what she called “urban design
fantasies,” that approached the qualities of the environment
more abstractly (expressing general ideas and society’s most
secret desires),66 and at the same time in a concrete way—
while the convertible modular systems could be applied to
different locations, fantasies corresponded and reacted to
the specificity of the site, to its history and to what she calls
the “spiritual” qualities of particular places.67 As an example,
a labyrinthine park with chimneys at the site of a former
power-station by the sea. The chimneys were to steam color­
ful and pleasant-smelling fumes—they would replace foun-
tains, but would articulate the historical meaning of the
location.68
In a longer theoretical explanation Runge described her
redesign of the urban environment as an attempt to create an
integral living environment, not a static structure, but rather
a “multimedia [environment],”69 which aspires to embrace
human sensory organs, in order to integrate and involve city
dwellers into the city’s communication.70 Her aim was to
overcome the rationality of modernization, as well as the
extreme functionality of modern city, by revealing the multi-
layered, “chaotic” nature of the urban environment, and, at
last, to re-establish the more spiritual and creative relation-
ship human—city.71 In addition to the reclamation of space
through an active design process, the design project included
the replacement of old overexploited monuments.72 Unlike
traditional monuments, with their specific ideological func-
tion, the purpose of her more temporary constructions was to
create a place for “intercommunication,”73 a “neutral space of
intimacy” rather than of grand and heroic mo(nu)ments.74 In
this respect, much like Tatlin’s concept of monuments for the
new era, that considered future monuments, not as objects of
veneration, but as fully operational sites used for various
social activities, that included lecture rooms, sports halls,
information centers, print shops, cafeterias, and other social
venues.75 In the context of Eastern-European public space,
where the collective activity within the city’s public space was
controlled and converged into workers’ and military parades,

Runge’s design was an act of intervention, which declared
public space to be a meeting place used actively by the citi-
zens. Central in her diploma work was the use of new meth-
ods of expression, but, in a broader sense, the use art in order
to adapt space to people and their needs: “One should once
again raise the aim of bringing art to the streets, by giving it
volume and content proper to urban design.”76 This should
not be read as a desire to bend art to tasks suited to the politics
and official ideology. To bring art to the streets and into the
service of the people means much more—no matter how uto-
pian the idea—that she recognized the potential inherent in
the formal means of art to (connect with the technology of
the new media, to produce new environment, and with it,
possibly, a different kind of society. In the mid-1970s Runge
began working on a series of geometric abstractions dealing
with the construction of space in a more abstract way, analyti-
cal investigations from which real architectural or design
projects could be developed, such as her design for the play-
grounds of the kindergarten in Pärnu (1977).
2 Technical drawing. Sirje Runge (Lapin). “Proposal for the Design of
Areas in Central Tallinn.” 1975. Item lost. Photo: Tiit Veermäe.
(Environment, Projects, Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972–1985.
Tallinn. 2008. 325)
3 Display board. Sirje Runge (Lapin). “Proposal for the Design of Areas in
Central Tallinn.” 1975. Coll: Museum of Estonian Architecture.
(Environment, Projects, Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972–1985.
Tallinn. 2008. 136)
In 1976, Lapin himself presented a project for a Monu-
ment to Tallinn—a 345-meter-tall monument located in the
new residential area of Mustamäe (Fig. 4). On each story of
the Suprematist-style monument, a period of the history of
Tallinn would be displayed using audiovisual multimedia.
At night “from 18 to 6 single elements glow colorfully and
split away to outer space. Unrepeatable spatial situations are
regulated by a computer.”77 The work was presented in the
experimental section of the survey exhibition on twentieth-
century Estonian monumental sculpture titled Estonian
Monumental Art 1902–1975. The experimental section fea-
tured models and architectural projects, kinetic objects,
abstract painting and prints, and was very different from the
main exhibition, which consisted of decorative sculpture
and Soviet memorial complexes that were displayed in pho-
tographs and slides. Nevertheless, the show also included a
few Constructivist objects from the 1920s.78 The models for
monuments by Hernik Olvi, exhibited in close proximity to
the “new work,” established a connection between the new
reconstructin g art and architecture 287

4 Display board. Leonhard Lapin. “A Monument to Tallinn.” 1976. Coll:
Museum of Estonian Architecture. (Environment, Projects, Concepts.
Architects of the Tallinn School 1972–1985. Tallinn. 2008. 173)
work and Constructivism. This link was stressed also by the
design of a booklet New Work in the Exhibition “Estonian
Monumental Art,” which was executed using the colors red
and black.
However, Lapin’s project was not just a proposal for a
new monument. What Lapin—the curator of that show,
assisted by the art historian Viivi Viilmann—proposed was
an altogether different understanding of monumental art, in
which the monument was set apart from political propa-
ganda and its traditional commemorative function. Lapin’s
design for a monument—a tree symbolizing the unity of
nature and the new technological environment—which dis-
solves into the outer space, illustrates this, if in a very futur-
istic way, Lapin’s idea of that “new monumental art,” that
moved away from objects (monuments) toward integrated
space (environment). In an anonymous review in a local arts
magazine, Lapin wrote that the designs presented at the
exhibition did not refer so much to real future monuments,
so much as they opened up possibilities for a new kind of
monumental art, creating an integral environment.79 Paint-
ings and objects in the exhibition were to be taken as experi-
ments in visual perception and the organization of space
that would open possibilities for large-scale spatial produc-
tions and lead to the “formation of habitable audio-visual
surroundings.”80 Similar to the principles of “monuments of
288 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
the new era,” Lapin expressed the need for a synthesis, to
unite different types of art.81 Of course, abstract work, such
as prints by Raul Meel, drawings by Tõnis Vint, geometric
paintings by Sirje Runge, and kinetic objects by the engi-
neer Villu Jõgeva, might be considered as designs for monu-
mental paintings or decorations whose function was to
“smuggle” abstract work into the show.82 However, I want
to suggest that, at least from Lapin’s point of view, this was
not the case. Lapin, for one, appropriated the official genre
of monumental art and reworked it, giving it meaning as an
extensive redesign of public urban space. And eventually, as
a result, a different kind of public space would emerge.83 It
is not coincidence that architecture took an important place
in its production.84
From Constructive Art to Destructive
Architecture
In a review article on Estonian architecture of the 1970s
(published in 1981; Lapin associated Constructivism85 with
an “architecture that organizes space.”86 He mentioned the
Pärnu Sanatorium by Vilen Künnapu (competition 1975) in
which the connection of different functional units at the
first floor level with a system of galleries created a new kind
of “multifunctional and compact” street.87 Whereby, the
project for the sanatorium—designed by Vilen Künnapu
together with Jüri Okas—was presented in the aforemen-
tioned experimental section of the monumental art show, as
“an example of enlarged means and sources of monumental
art” (Fig. 5).88 The diagonal arrangements, intersecting sur-
faces and the use of axonometry, also manifested in the
works of New York Five at about the same time, suggest
Constructivism. Reminiscent of Lissitzky’s Prouns the exhi-
bition display for the spa by Künnapu and Okas can be
turned in many directions and it is impossible to say at any
instant which is the bottom and which the upper edge.89
A Constructivist approach also occurs in the Kuldne
Kodu (Golden Home) housing for the Pärnu KEK con-
struction company (architect Toomas Rein), 1970–71,
which Lapin saw to be directly “reminiscent of Russian
Constructivist commune houses” (Fig. 6).90 He described
these buildings, which, after years of “free-planning” actu-
ally “organized the space between the structures into a uni-
fied urban environment.”91 Importantly, these kinds of
interior streets and squares, gardens, and alleyways did “not
only allow operational connections between the functions
of different blocks of the building, but also created the pos-
sibility for the emergence of more intimate relationships,
for the formation of integral community.”92 Lapin pointed
to the function of architecture (which he called ethical) and
 5 Display board. Vilen Künnapu and Jüri
Okas. Pärnu Sanatorium and boiler house.
1976. Item lost. (Environment, Projects,
Concepts. Architects of the Tallinn School 1972–
1985. Tallinn. 2008. 159)

6 View. “Kuldne Kodu” (Golden Home)

housing complex. Toomas Rein. Photo: Tiit
Veermäe. (Ehituskunst. 1981. 1. 13)

reconstructin g art and architecture 289


7 Display board. Sirje Runge (Lapin). Pärnu KEK construction company
kindergarten playgrounds. 1977. Private collection. (Kunst. 1980. 2. 47)
buildings to create and organized the environment, and,
with it a space for social communication. According to
Lapin, the main task of the architect was “the organization
of interaction between people with architecture,”93 the part
that has been deliberately neglected by official architecture
and city planning. The bleak areas between the block-
houses with no specific use or value, being, in fact, an ele-
mentary part of socialist city planning: where they were
intended to prevent any intimate communication between
the inhabitants of adjacent buildings and, as a result, the
formation of independent urban communities.94 The most
interesting element of the Pärnu KEK housing complex, for
Lapin, was the kindergarten (architect Toomas Rein, inte-
rior design Helle Gans) with the playgrounds designed by
Runge, who used simple geometric forms and structures
(Fig. 7), where the constructivist principles in a way have
been carried to the extreme. At the time of its completion it
was, according to Lapin, one of the best examples of the
“natural synthesis of architecture and art, where the func-
tional elements grow organically into nonfunctional forms
extending the prescribed functions and norms of the struc-
ture into a work of art.”95
This statement reveals another aspect of Lapin’s under-
standing of the architecture, which was not limited to the
traditional domain of discipline. The crisis in Modernist
(Functionalist) architecture, and in Modernist culture gen-
erally, was, according to Lapin, related to what he calls its
290 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
“closeness.”96 In a seminar of Estonian and Finnish archi-
tects in 1979 (Art and Construction) Lapin criticized the
economic principles of production and efficiency, the
“architecture of straight lines,”97 which had lost the most
important—its relation to the world and the surrounding
environment, the ability to reflect the changes taking place
in society.98 Lapin attacked not only Modernist rationality
and functionality, but the official discourse that saw archi-
tecture as part of the discipline of engineering. In an article,
first presented as a lecture in a young architects seminar in
1978, Lapin pointed to the “specialist culture” (Modernist
professionalism) and the lack of unity in contemporary
(Functionalist) architectural practice, manifest most glar-
ingly in its bureaucratic and hierarchic organization.99
Lapin critically observed the post–World War II
­recuperation of Constructivism, that had utilized selected
aesthetic techniques and structures, and its technocracy, and
pointed to the interdisciplinary character of Modernist
architecture and city planning in the early twentieth cen-
tury, absorbing experiments from fields of visual arts, film,
philosophy, etc. Hence, the reconstruction of architecture
had to begin exactly there: by returning to the original
“openness.” Lapin encouraged the architects to rethink the
architectural practice as interdisciplinary.100 Already in
1974, in an article on “synthetic architecture,” Lapin (con-
fronting the official synthesis of the arts discourse) claimed
that artistic attachments to the buildings (such as decorative
reliefs or panels) were not specific to the structure of build-
ings.101 He criticized the bringing of separate arts into archi-
tecture, and demanded that all other modes of art be
included in the creative process of an architectural form as
architecture itself should be a synthetic art, integrating in its
form “philosophical ideas, sociology, psychology, research
in theology and theater experiments, the formal aesthetics
of visual arts, the efforts of the scientific-technological
world and industrial possibilities.”102 The architect (as well
as the artist) had to abandon narrow specialization in a par-
ticular field and instead defy it: In the future, the Architect’s
Union, with its hierarchical structure, would be replaced by
independent creative collectives.103
Actually, artists and architects had to free themselves
from the formalistic approach and go beyond the produc-
tion of endless variations of objects (buildings or paintings).
In the 1978 seminar (mentioned above) of young architects,
Lapin summarized the problem as follows: “Architecture is
not only residential areas, hotels, houses, sheds, posts, col-
umns, sticks, antennas, architectons, but all that is related to
the problem of space, to the problem of emptiness.” He
called for an architecture, that would not be pragmatic but
artistically free and experimental—spiritual—instead:

“People do not need rather mediocre houses and oppressive
cities, but the message, ideas that would be the antenna to
cosmic energy.”104
In retrospect, Lapin has stated, that they were, much to
the chagrin of the first generation, such as Kondratiev and
Laarman, using Constructivist ideas rather playfully.105 In
the introduction to the publication of young architects in
1978 he could state that “the young generation has restored
the bridge to Estonian classical Functionalism, but it also
has extended the interpretation of Constructivism toward a
synthetic and destructive architecture.”106 If by ­“synthetic”
Lapin meant the interdisciplinary approach he found fertile
for the necessary renewal of art and architecture, how can
we understand the “destructiveness”?
Similarly, Vilen Künnapu spoke about destructiveness
and disruptiveness when he was reviewing the exhibition
Reconstruction. Idea. Project. Object of Jüri Okas in the Tallinn
Art Hall’s third floor gallery in 1976. The exhibition dis-
played photographs and prints from the series called Recon-
structions (suggesting itself the revival of Constructivism).
Based on photographs or photo-montages, the prints repre-
sented various (primarily urban or industrial) environments
that, in turn, were overlaid with lines and black squares that
formed “constructive” structures on the image, suggesting
analyses and reconstructions of these particular urban situ-
ations. Künnapu described Okas’ method as follows: “Cut-
ting up the space, moving its elements around, thus
producing new illusory spaces, intertwining the space . . .
creating new perspectives.”107 In addition to photographs
and prints the exhibition also included an installation—an
8 View. Jüri Okas. Exhibition
“Reconstruction. Idea. Project.
Object.” Tallinn Art Hall, III floor
gallery. 1976. Photo: Jüri Okas
(Kunst. 1978. 2. 55)
environment—that can be seen as an attempt to transform
the reconstruction into three dimensions (Fig. 8).108 Using
wooden boards painted black, and mirrors that fragmented
and distorted the space, Okas created an encompassing zone
of perception that was transformed as the viewer moved
about. In this way, by actively involving the viewer in the
exhibit, he altered the traditional viewing situation, and
rendered, by producing instability, fragmentation and dis-
orientation, space more obviously perceptible. Comment-
ing on his own work, Okas has suggested a binary structures
such as “order and chaos,” “construction and deconstruc-
tion” as central themes.109 The deconstruction and recon-
struction of space coincides with Minimalism, which
emerged in the 1960s and made space the object of art. The
simple geometric structures of Donald Judd or Robert
Morris, as well as Dan Flavin’s light installations, related to
the gallery’s interior architecture, sought to particularize
and articulate it. So too are Okas’s spaces more complicated,
theatrical, closer to the “disorienting Constructivism” of El
Lissitzky’s exhibition spaces.110 Ambiguity and uncertainty
operates also in Okas’s Reconstructions, as he has explained:
The intention of his installations and pictures was to pro-
duce dissonance and to construct irrationality, “the feeling
of oscillating on razor’s edge.”111
Emblematic of this kind of shifting (or displacing) of
Constructivism, to the transition from “structive to destruc-
tive forms” are Lapin’s own projects for houses he realized
in the mid-1970s, and that he himself has called machine-
architecture,112 with reference to Le Corbusier, but are at
the same time reminiscent of architectonics (Fig. 9).113 As an
reconstructin g art and architecture 291

9 Ink drawing. Leonhard Lapin. “Machine-architecture IV (Villa Valeri).”
1976. Coll: Museum of Estonian Architecture. (Leonhard Lapin. Masinad
1972–1978 (Machines 1972–1978). Tallinn 1998. 61)
Estonian historian of architecture, Andres Kurg has pointed
out that in these houses the program seems to be rather
impractical and even distracting; the forms do not follow
the functions, which are not predefined but left open. The
move­ment in the house is so complexly organized, that it
becomes an adventure rather than a promenade.114
Space and perceptions of space were the central inter-
est of the period, or, as Lapin put it: The true challenge for
the contemporary culture lay in the “human living environ-
ment.”115 This, indeed, was also the aim of the designers at
the time—to create an harmonious material environment.116
However, Lapin argued not for the control of “chaos” by
means of total design,117 but, instead, with the disrupting of
the functionality of modern urban space, confronting it
with what he called non-rational or illogical, and even
destructive. According to Lapin, one has to restore to the
thinking process, emotion, and renounce the dualism of
the spheres of reason and emotion that, since Descartes,
have dominated the Western way of life.118 In reality, rea-
soning is as much illogical and irrational as it is rational and
logical.119 Similarly, Runge insisted on involving irrational
details in city planning in order to generate creative inter-
relations between people and space.120 This destructiveness
was introduced to intervene in the means-ends logic of
modern technocratic society. Thus, the new environment
292 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
was not a functionally complete environment, but much
more a multi­layered and dynamic one, including rational as
well as irrational elements.
Epilogue: A Glimpse into the Future—
Multimedia Environment
The Machine Age, for Lapin, was all-encompassing.121
Lapin was fascinated with technological progress and with
the possibilities it gave to artists, and, at the same time, well
aware of the power of machines, the dependence of human
beings on the machine and its manifestations, as they previ-
ously had been dependent on nature: “Human beings, who
felt that they were a part of living nature, were cast into an
artificial environment of which they did not as yet feel a
part.”122 The new (objective) art, in Lapin’s view, became
the most important tool to reflect this “new ecological rela-
tionship” and communicate it to the people.123 Art and
architecture would help people to discover their real, mod-
ern nature, though this would not necessarily make them
happy. In fact, it might even frighten them.124 Again, the
difference between Lapin’s ideas and those of designers, is
apparent here: Design also embraced consciousness in rela-
tion to the environment, but while designers sought to solve
problems meeting the needs or desires of people, Lapin’s
aim was much more ambitious—not to satisfy people, but to
encourage them to step into a more concrete—spiritual and
creative—relationship with reality.125
In 1980, Lapin adapted Johannes Vares-Barbarus’s
constructivist poetry for a multimedia performance, Multi-
plitseeritud inimene (Multiplied Man), which was realized as
part of the cultural program of the Moscow Olympic Games
(Fig. 10).126 Lapin’s geometric costumes and stage design
was reminiscent of Constructivist performances, such as the
three-dimensional, bare-wood set Liubov Popova created
in 1922 for Meyerhold’s The Magnanimous Cuckhold, com-
bining it with contemporary technology. He described
multi­media as “an audio-visual spectacle, which includes all
of the major contemporary art practices, cultural methods
and technology. . . . as both object and as art, [multimedia]
must be an integral part of an artificial environment. Its
resources grow from the modern city, industry, science—
and from the wider ecological system, in which man and his
consciousness have just a random role to play.”127 Thus,
Multiplied Man can be seen in the context of the aesthetic
and technological integration realized in the environment
as it was envisioned by Lapin’s concept of objective art. He
used every media available to him at the time: television,
projector, magnetophone, radio, laser, synthesizer, type-
writer—“machines,” which were manipulated by the actors.

And conversely: the voices of actors were modified and dis-
torted by megaphones, loudspeakers, synthesizers, all being
interrupted by the “noise” generated by radios, TVs, and
other devices. Importantly, Lapin did not distinguish
between the actors, the objects and the visual figures and
devices on stage.128 The play narrated the creation of man
out of the cosmos or void; turning the initial creature—
the geometric man—into a social human being under the
influence of social processes, and then—as a product of
­creativity—into a multiple man.129 The latter would merge
into outer space again.130
The performance derived from the ideas and artistic
interests Lapin was involved in during the previous decade
and in the center of which stood the question of the rela-
tionship of the human being and the machine, the possibili-
ties of human existence in the new technological reality.
Critical of standardization, but not less affirmative than
Vares-Barbarus, Lapin recognized the machine as a new
reality. While he consciously acknowledged the dependence
of humanity on machines, he did not deplore this, but,
instead, looked for ways to engage decisively with machines
and technology. The performance was centered on the
experience of contemporary communication technology—
radios, TVs, screens, loudspeakers, light projectors—all
with a physical presence on the stage, and all aspiring to
embrace all the human senses. This experience effectively
resembled the formative media experience of the new gen-
eration born in the age of the expansion of machines and
communication: “A child who is born in the 1970s grows up
10 Photograph.
“Multiplitseeritud inimene”
(Multiplied Man). Leonhard
Lapin. State Youth Theatre. 1980.
Photo: Tõnu Tormis. (Leonhard
Lapin. Avangard. Tartu 2003.
226)
inside a speeding car and on the background of pulsating
television screens.” 131 It seems, however, that Lapin did not
simply reproduce that experience, but also exhibited the
material conditions of its production, and exposed the pro-
cess of communication in all its obvious aggressiveness. In
this way, Lapin simultaneously constructed and dismantled
the authority of machines, i.e. media (manipulation), and,
crucially, explored “the possibilities of human beings in
their new technological reality.”132 Multimedia was a pro-
cess, and, at the same time, a laboratory, it served as a kind
of future scenario, for the time that multimedia would come
into the streets, and influence architecture and design.133
How can we designate the legacy of Constructivism in
Estonian art and architecture in the 1970s? Epp Lankots
has pointed out the importance of historiography, which
she understands as a cultural practice rather than an aca-
demic discipline, for the (non-official) artistic practice of
the 1970s. Artists as well as architects make use of history
(i.e. historical styles), in order to legitimize contemporary
art practices.134 However, I would like to argue that the turn
toward Constructivism was not just a “reviving”—a mim-
icry of an historical style,135 but stood for an artistic involve-
ment motivated by the particular social situation of the
1970s, and by the demands it placed on Estonian artists. It
was different from the rhetoric of a tradition—the assertion
of historical continuity with pre-war art and architecture—
as merely a survival strategy.136 Lapin, the most passionate
advocate of Constructivism, was not thinking about Con-
structivism in terms of a formal or historical reference, but
reconstructin g art and architecture 293
he understood it in a more open way, and not limited to a
retrospective dimension. His absorption of Constructivism
was less a return to a formal language, than to the ideas and
issues, that had a relevance for his work and understanding
of art. He was looking for similar impulses in the present
situation, even if now there was not a trace of the atmo-
sphere of departure and passionate experimentation that
was characteristic of the early 1920s. On the contrary, the
1970s decade has typically been described as reactionary: it
was a period of stagnation, following disillusionment after
the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968 and the fading
hope for a reformed socialist society, with such distinctive
characteristics as the deadlock of public life and the with-
drawal of citizens into apolitical privacy. Instead of engag-
ing in public life and politics, people began to turn inward
to themselves: Material well-being, owning a car or a sum-
mer cottage, counterbalanced collaboration with the sys-
tem. These were the years in which the typical Soviet
society was taking shape.137 It was also the moment in which
the destruction to the environment caused by industrializa-
tion became more and more visible.
These aspects motivated the reaction of Lapin and his
colleagues. In his critique Lapin permanently called on art-
ists to define their position—why they created, and for
whom.138 The artists and architects discussed here sought to
renegotiate the social function of art and rethink the rela-
tion between art and politics, and were convinced that this
could happen only if art actively intervened and trans-
formed everyday living space. The belief that architecture
and art have a responsibility to the community, and that art
is capable of imagining alternatives to the dominant order is
what seems to appeal to them in Constructivism.139
Lapin did not ignore the social and political connota-
tions of Constructivism. On the contrary, he specifically
emphasized the social and political aims of Constructivist
practice, seeing it less as an aesthetic philosophy (that had to
come to dominate Western Europe), than as an utopian
practice; collectivist and ideological in its nature. Construc-
tivism was associated foremost with the aim of producing a
new environment. Even if the approach to the environment
remained primarily aesthetic, it included a political dimen-
sion. In the Soviet Union in the 1970s, these kinds of “aes-
thetic” interventions had emancipative potential:—creating
new, or reclaiming neglected and marginal spaces for social
interaction and communication—challenged and contested
the indifference which had taken hold of society, and offer-
ing an alternative to official approaches to space and envi-
ronment. Constructivism thus helped Lapin’s generation to
reassess the concept of art and the artist in the context of
twentieth-century expansion of industrial society, and to
294 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
challenge official Soviet Modernism, leading to a repoliti-
calization of art and architecture (in contrast to the gener-
ally suggested Neo-Constructivisms a-politicality140) in the
period of Brezhnev stagnation. The critique launched by
them did not imply the abandonment of Modernist envi-
ronment and culture as much as its condensation and activa-
tion. Despite the negative effects of modernization and
industrialization that became increasingly visible in the
1970s, artists were advocates of the modern urban world. In
which there they identified the necessity for their artistic
intervention.
Notes
1. In 1977, Stephen C. Feinstein indicated, in one of the first studies of
Soviet Estonian avant-garde art made in the West, a nurturing influence of
Russian Constructivism on Estonian artists, see Stephen C. Feinstein. “The
Avant-Garde in Soviet Estonia,” New Art from the Soviet Union. The Known
and the Unknown (ed: Norton Dodge and Alison Hilton). Washington 1977.
31–34. In an unpublished work of 1989, Jaak Kangilaski wrote, in connec-
tion with Sirje Runge’s work, of Tallinn Constructivism, see Jaak Kangilaski.
Sirje Runge kunst (The art of Sirje Runge). 1989. Manuscript in Sirje R­ unge’s
archive.
2. See Karl Kantor. Krasota i pol’za (Beauty and utility). Moscow. 1967. For
the Marxist philosopher Kantor the history of contemporary design starts
with Soviet Constructivism and Bauhaus Functionalism. The latter he saw
growing out from corporate design, whereas “true functionalism” was
developed in Socialist design.
3. A. Abramova. Tekhnicheskaia estetika (Technical aesthetics). 1964. 1. Inside
Cover. See also A. Abramova, “Nasledie Vhutemasa” (The legacy of
VKhUTEMAS), Dekorativnoe iskusstvo. 1964. 4. 8–12.
4. The research of historians Selim O. Khan-Magomedov and Larissa
­Zhadova, to name just a few that have contributed to the revival of the 1920s
Soviet avant-garde, was made at the VNIITE’s theory department.
5. Karl Eimermacher. “Funktionswandel in der sowjetischen Nachkriegs­
kunst,” Bildende Kunst in Osteuropa im 20. Jahrhundert. Schriftenreihe der
Deutschen Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde 10 (ed: Hans-Jürgen Drengenberg).
Berlin 1991. 218.
6. Tamara Luuk. “Läbimurre ja läbimurdjad eesti 1960-ndate aastate graafi-
kas” (Breakthrough and out-breakers in Estonian graphic art in the 1960s),
Kunstiteaduslikke uurimusi. 1994. 7. 212.
7. Jaak Kangilaski. “Realismi mõiste metamorfoosid nõukogude kunst­i­
teoorias” (Metamorphoses of the notion of realism in Soviet art theory),
Kunst­iteaduslikke uurimusi. XII. 1–2. 21.
8. Andres Kurg. “Official Architecture, Unofficial Art. Two Exhibitions of
the ‘Tallinn School’ in 1970s,” Architecture+Art. New Visions, New Strategies
(ed: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Esa Laaksonen). Jyväskylä 2007. 176.
9. Iurii Gerchuk. “The Aesthetics of Everyday Life in the Khrushchev
Thaw in the USSR (1954–1964),” Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material
Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe (ed: David Crowley and Susan E. Reid).
Oxford, New York 2000. 85–88.
10. Victor Buchli. “Khrushchev, Modernism, and the Fight against ‘Petit-
bourgeois’ Consciousness in the Soviet Home,” Journal of Design History. X.
2. 161–76.
11. Gerchuk, work cited in note 9. 89–90.
12. Richard F. S. Starr. “Writings from the 1960s on the Modern Movement
in Russia,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. XXX. 2. 171–72;
Eduard Tinn. “Esteetika õppetunnid” (Lessons in aesthetics), Kunst 1979.
1. 28–29.
13. El Lissitzky. Maler, Architekt, Typograf, Fotograf: Erinnerungen, Briefe,
Schriften (ed: Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers). Dresden 1967.
14. For example Jüri Keevallik. “Nõukogude kunsti lühikonspekt 1917–
1922. Revolutsiooni sulatustiiglis” (Notes on Soviet art 1917–1922. In the
melting pot of the revolution), Noorus. 1971. 3. 48–57. From 1967 to 1973
a number of articles devoted to important figures of Soviet avant-garde
(Tatlin, Klutsis, Meyerhold, Rodchenko) appeared in Noorus.
15. J. J. Rubinsteini (Moskva) kunstikogu kataloog. Vene kunst XX saj. 1 kolman-
dikul (Catalogue of J. J. Rubinstein’s art collection (Moscow). Russian art of
the first third of the XX century). Tallinn 1966. Exhibition included some
three hundred works by 117 artists. With a larger number of works repre-
sented were: Mikhail Larionov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Nikolai Sinezubov
and Aleksandr Shevchenko.
16. In 1967, Henrik Olvi had an exhibition in the hall of sections in the
­Tallinn Art Hall; in the same year Arnold Akberg exhibited in Tallinn State
Art Museum and next year, 1968, in Tartu State Art Museum; Märt Laar-
man had an exhibition in Tallinn State Art Museum in 1969; Jaan Vahtra’s
exhibition took place in Tartu State Art Museum in 1972.
17. The group had initially appeared in the little southeastern town, Võrum,
under the leadership of Jaan Vahtra. Märt Laarman, Arnold Akberg, Henrik
Olvi and Edmond-Arnold Blumenfeldt were invited to join as the “North-
ern” wing of the group a year later. For a comprehensive survey of group’s
activities, contacts and creativity, see Liis Pählapuu. “The Group of Esto-
nian Artists. An experiment in the culture of 1920s and 1930s Estonia,”
Geomeetriline inimene. Eesti Kunstnikkude Rühm ja 1920–1930. aastate kunsti-
uuendus (Geometrical Man. The Group of Estonian Artists and Art Innova-
tion in the 1920s and 1930s), Tallinn 2012. 13–69.
18. In the 1950s Olvi, Laarman, Akberg and others were expelled from the
Soviet Estonian Artists’ Union, their member status was reinstated at the
end of the decade, or at least in the late 1960s. In a personal account on his
contacts with the EKR, Lapin has described the difficulty approaching the
artists he so admired: Leonhard Lapin. “Kohtumisi Eesti Kunstnikkude
Ryhmaga” (Encounters with the Group of Estonian Artists’), Eesti Kunstnik-
kude Ryhm (The Group of Estonian Artists). Tartu 2005. 5–9.
19. In 1973, Kuusik’s book Ehituskunst (Art of building) appeared in print,
which quickly became a sort of cult textbook for generations of architecture
students; Edgar Johan Kuusik. Ehituskunst. Tallinn 1973.
20. Jaan Vahtra. Valitud tööd. Mälestusi, vesteid, artikleid (Selected works.
Memories, stories, articles). Tallinn 1961.181.
21. Märt Laarman. “Uuest kunstist” (About new art), Uue Kunsti Raamat.
Eesti Kunstnikkude Ryhma almanak (Book of New Art. Almanac of Group of
Estonian Artists). Tallinn 1928. 4–5.
22. Ibid. 6–7.
23. Another art journal, EKR, relied for its understanding of art on L’Esprit
Nouveau by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant: see Viivi Viilmann. Arnold
Akberg. Tallinn 1991. 12.
24. Pählapuu, work cited in note 17. 53.
25. Rein Loodus. Eesti raamatukunsti teke ja areng (Genesis and develop-
ment of Estonian book art). Tallinn 1982. 83–91.
26. Mai Levin. Märt Laarman. Tallinn 1996. 12.
27. Nigol Andresen. “J. Barbaruse hommik ja keskpäev” (Morning and
noon of J. Barbarus), Looming. 1980. 1. 121–22.
28. Leonhard Lapin. “Johannes Barbarus konstruktivistliku poeedina”
(Johannes Barbarus as constructivist poet), Sirp ja Vasar. 1980. May 30. 9.
According to Lapin, these books were real constructivist “things.”
29. Andresen, work cited in note 27.
30. The rediscovery of Russian avant-garde, however, had began earlier. In
1966, a small group of students of the State Art Institute organized a confer-
ence with lectures on Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall,
Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo and Natalia Goncharova. To collect refer-
ence material for their papers, the students had a permission to work in the
library and archive of the State Hermitage museum in Leningrad.
31. Vilen Künnapu. “Jüri Okase keskkonnakunst” (Jüri Okas’s environmen-
tal art), Sirp ja Vasar. 1976. March 26. 9.
32. In 1979 Lapin co-edited the issue of local arts magazine Kunst (Art)
dedicted to Russian/Soviet avant-garde with the “black square” on the
cover. He also edited and designed a collection of essays of Russian avant-
garde architects, which was compiled in late 1970s, but would be published
only in 1989: Arhitektid arhitektuurist (Architects on architecture) (ed:
Leonhard Lapin). Tallinn 1989.
33. Cf. Epp Lankots. “History Appropriating Contemporary Concerns:
Leonhard Lapin’s Architectural History and Mythical Thinking,” Kunstite-
aduslikke Uurimusi. XIX. 3. 121–30.
34. Lapin believed that terminology in art and architecture should empha-
size the symbolic meanings rather than the functionality of terms as the
historians use them; ibid. 124.
35. Leonhard Lapin. “Taie kujundamas keskkonda” (Art designing the envi-
ronment) (1971), Leonhard Lapin. Kaks kunsti. Valimik ettekandeid ja
artikleid kunstist ning ehituskunstist 1971–1995 (Two kinds of art: selected
talks and articles on art and architecture, 1971–1995). Tallinn 1997. 18.
36. Ibid., 16.
37. In a presentation, held in young architects’ seminar in 1978, Lapin simi-
larly claimed that “the problem of spatiality is not only essential to architec-
ture, but to the art of the 20th century generally. The 20th century culture
is architectonic in its prevailing category of spatiality.” Leonhard Lapin.
“Arhitektuur kui kunst” (Architecture as art) (1978), Arhitektuur: kogumik
ettekandeid, artikleid, vastukajasid, dokumente ja tõlkeid uuemast arhitektuurist
(Architecture. A Collection of Papers, Articles, Reflections, Documents and
Translations about the New Architecture). Tallinn 1979. 7.
38. Lapin, work cited in note 35. 18.
39. The happening, known as Coloring the Elephant, was initated by artist
Andres Tolts, who was a design student at that time and had a studio in the
neighborhood. It was sanctioned by the local municipal housing committee
as a renewal project by young artists.
40. Leonhard Lapin. “Objektiivne kunst” (Objective art) (1975), Leonhard
Lapin. Valimik artikleid ja ettekandeid kunstist 1967–1977 (Selected articles
and talks on art 1967–1977). Tallinn 1977. 48–63. The article has recently
been translated by Andres Kurg and Krista Mits: Leonhard Lapin. “Objec-
tive Art,” Art Margins. II. 2. 172–85. The following quotations refer to this
translation.
41. The papers from the Harku ’75 symposium were assembled and issued
by Raul Meel in the samizdat-edition Lubada inimest (To Allow for the
Human Being) and are reprinted in: Harku 1975–1995 (ed: Leonhard
Lapin, Anu Liivak and Raul Meel). Tallinn 1995.
42. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 172.
43. Idem.
44. Idem.
45. Ibid. 184.
46. For example Lapin’s text is indebted to Pierre Restany’s book Livre
Blanc—Objet Blanc (1969). In the interest of conciseness, I also shall not be
dealing with Western Constructivist influences (such as De Stijl or Bauhaus)
on Lapin, but will be focusing on Russian Constructivism.
47. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 178.
48. Ibid., 182. Although it is not entirely clear where the work was shown.
The Russian artists Yuri Sobolev, who at the time was working for the maga-
reconstructin g art and architecture 295
zine Znanije-Sila (Knowledge-Power), and Yuri Reshetnikov compiled a
multimedia program for the ICSID, using the works of different artists and
designers. Within the program the work of another Estonian artist, Raul
Meel, was presented.
49. Eda Sepp. “Leonhard Lapin: Autoportrait as paradox and parody,”
­Leonhard Lapin. Painting, graphic, sculpture, architectonic. Tallinn 1997. 21.
50. Leonhard Lapin. “Pavel Mihhailovitš Kondratjev 1902–1985,” Kunst
1986. 1. 55.
51. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 173.
52. Lapin’s concept of objective art seems to correspond to the non-objective
of Malevich. However, Lapin was using first the Polish translation of
the book that he acquired from a local bookshop. Later Kondratiev made
the Russian version Suprematizm. Mir kak bespredmetnost’ ili Vetshnyi pokoi
(Suprematism. The world as non-objectivity, or eternal peace) available to
him. Lapin (as well as Arrak previous to him) translated the Russian term
“predmet” (object) into Estonian “ese” (thing, item), i.e. “esemeteta
maailm” (world without things). See also Andres Kurg. “Introduction to
Leonhard Lapin’s ‘Objective Art’,” Art Margins. II. 2. 168–69.
53. Lapin recollected this event and the impact it had on him; especially the
presentation by Arrak that captivated him and “gave an entirely new per-
spective on art.” Leonhard Lapin. “ANK-iga-ANKita” (With ANK and
without ANK), Eesti Ekspress. 1995. April 21. B4. Jüri Arrak. Teoreetilisi seisu-
kohti revolutsiooni järgses nõukogude kunstis. Kandinsky, Malevitš (Theoretical
views in post-revolutionary Soviet art. Kandinsky, Malevich). Manuscript.
1966.
54. See Leonhard Lapin. Multiplitseeritud inimene (Multiplied Man). Pro-
gram booklet. Tallinn 1980. n.p. Lapin used Malevich’ works as illustrations
in the booklet of the Constructivist performance Multiple Man that he staged
in 1980. The booklet contained also an introductory text on Malevich.
55. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 179. Original: Laarman, work cited in note
21. 7–8.
56. El Lissitzky and Ilja Ehrenburg. “Die Blockade Rußlands geht ihrem
Ende entgegen,” El Lissitzky, work cited in note 13. 341.
57. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 178–79.
58. Jaak Kangilaski. “Paradigma muutus 1970. aastate lääne kunstis ja selle
kajastus Eesti kunstielus” (Paradigm shift in Western art in the 1970s and its
reflection in the art life of Estonia), Jaak Kangilaski. Kunstist, Eestist ja eesti
kunstist (On art, Estonia and Estonian art). Tartu 2000. 220–21.
59. Vilen Künnapu. “Kümme arhitekti Tallinna Kunstisalongis” (Ten archi-
tects in Tallinn Art Salon), Kunst. 1983. [2].
60. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 184. “As objective art is closely related to
new materials, new manufacturing techniques, and new means of expression
such as electronic and multimedia, it needs large resources and the support
of public organizations and state institutions.”
61. Sirje Lapin [Runge], “Tallinna kesklinna miljöö kujundamise võimalusi”
(Proposal for the design of areas in central Tallinn) (diploma work). Esto-
nian State Art Institute, Department of Industrial Art. 1975.
62. The diploma work included also three technical drawings and eighty
color slides, the latter representing abstract fragments from the same boards
of the project.
63. S. Lapin, work cited in note 61. 6.
64. Ibid., 7–8.
65. Ibid., 9–11.
66. Ibid., 14–15.
67. Sirje Lapin. “A New Environment of Tallinn” (1975). See Environment,
Projects, Concepts: Architects of the Tallinn School, 1972–1985 (ed: Andres Kurg
and Mari Laanemets). Tallinn 2008. 137. See also S. Lapin, work cited in
note 62. 5.
68. S. Lapin, work cited in note 61. 16.
296 centropa 1 4 . 3 : september 2 0 1 4
69. Ibid., 1.
70. Ibid., 19.
71. S. Lapin, work cited in note 67.
72. S. Lapin, work cited in note 61. 8.
73. Ibid., 1.
74. See Leonhard Lapin. “Tallinna kesklinna arhitektuurne keskkond” (The
built environment of Central Tallinn), Tallinna seminar (Tallinn seminar)
(ed: ignar Fjuk). Tallinn 1980. 20. After graduation in 1971 Lapin was
employed in the State Directorate for Restoration (untill 1974). His major
work there was an analysis of the built environment of Tallinn’s central areas
Ülevaade Tallinna city visuaalsest miljööst ja selle osatähtsusest kesklinna rekon-
strueerimisel (An overview of the visual milieu of Tallinn and its importance
in the reconstruction of the central city). Runge’s diploma work was based
on Lapin’s resarch.
75. See Vladimir Tatlin, “O pamyatnikakh novogo tipa” (On the monuments
of a new type) (1919), Mastera sovetskoy arkhitektury ob arkhitekture (Masters
of Soviet architecture on architecture) (ed: M. G. Barchina). Moscow 1975.
II. 75–76.
76. Ibid.,19.
77. See Environment, Projects, Concepts, work cited in note 67. 173.
78. Näituse “Eesti Monumentaalkunst” kataloog (Catalogue of the exhibition
“Estonian Monumental Art”). Tallinn 1976.
79. “Uudislooming monumentaalkunsti näitusel” (New work in the exhibi-
tion of monumental art), Kunst. 1978. 2. 35.
80. Idem.
81. Idem; see also Tatlin, work cited in note 75.
82. In many cases, under the name of “design” abstract works (as if they
were designs rather than paintings) would pass the jury and be presented in
exhibitions; see f.e. Mark Allen Svede. “Many Easels, Some Abandoned:
Latvian Art after Socialist Realism,” Art of the Baltics: The Struggle for Free-
dom of Artistic Expression under the Soviets, 1945–1991 (ed: Alla Rosenfeld and
Norton T. Dodge). New Brunswick, London 2002. 234–41.
83. The French sociologist Henri Lefebvre argues that a monument orga-
nizes collective space and that the search for new monumental forms also
offers the potential for a reorganization of social life; Henri Lefebvre. The
Production of Space (trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith). Oxford 1997. 200.
84. “Uudislooming,” work cited in note 79.
85. Some historians of architecture have argued that Lapin used the term
Constructivism inconsistently and confusingly, and, indeed, synonymously to
“Functionalism”; see f.e. Krista Kodres. “Valged majad on midagi muud”
(White houses are something else), Teisiti. Funktsionalism ja neofunk­tsionalism
Eesti arhitektuuris (Differently. Functionalism and Neo-Functionalism in
Estonian Architecture). Tallinn 1993. 25–34. It is however in the 1990s,
when the term Functionalism (and Neo-Functionalism) is being widely intro-
duced, as the counterpart of the “other,” i.e. Soviet (and much less Modern-
ist) mass construction; see: Andres Kurg “Modernism’s Endgame. Tallinn
1978,” Environment, Projects, Concepts, work cited in note 67. 61. In a series of
articles from 1974 On the appearance of Tallinn’s built environment Lapin dif-
ferentiated clearly between Functionalism and Constructivism, seeing the
latter as a subcategory of Functionalism, related foremost with Soviet Rus-
sia, but not exclusively, associating with it also Theo van Doesburg, J. J. P.
Oud, Adolf Loos. Leonhard Lapin. “Tallinna ehituskunstilisest ilmest”
(On the appearance of Tallinn’s built environment), Sirp ja Vasar. 1974.
Nov. 1. 8.
86. Leonhard Lapin. “Arengujooni Eesti seitsmekümnendate aastate
arhitek­tuuris” (Developments in the Estonian architecture of the 1970s),
Ehituskunst. 1981. 1. 13.
87. Idem.
88. “Uudislooming,” work cited in note 79.
89. On the Proun, see El Lissitzky. “Proun—Not World Visions but World
Reality” (1922), El Lissitzky. Life, Letters, Texts (ed: Sophie Lissitzky-­
Küppers). London 1980. 343. Constructivism is interpreted also in the
works by Marika Lõoke and Jüri Okas: designed for the exhibition complex
at the international youth and student festival Moscow ’85 (1984); Supre-
matist Flower Stand (1985) for the flower festival in Pirita (Tallinn).
90. Lapin, work cited in note 86. 13.
91. Idem.
92. Idem.
93. Idem.
94. Triin Ojari. “Elamispind. Modernistlik elamuehitusideoloogia ja Mus-
tamäe” (Floor Space. The Modernist Residential Housing Ideology and
Mustamäe), Kunstiteaduslikke Uurimusi. XIII. 2. 65.
95. Lapin, work cited in note 86. 13.
96. Leonhard Lapin. “Funktsionalismi kriis” (The crises of Functionalism),
Kaks kunsti, work cited in note 35. 139
97. Lapin, work cited in note 86. 12.
98. Lapin, work cited in note 96. 139
99. Lapin, work cited in note 37. 5–6. Some years earlier Lapin had made a
similar point in art context; Leonhard Lapin. “Kunstiga kunsti vastu” (With
art against art) (1977), Valimik, work cited in note 40. 77–84.
100. Lapin, work cited in note 96. 138.
101. Leonhard Lapin. “Kunstide süntees kaasaegses arhitektuuris–­sünteetiline
arhitektuur” (Synthesis of the arts in contemporary architecture–­synthetic
architecture), Kunst. 1974. 1. 53.
102. Idem.
103. Lapin, work cited in note 96. 139–40.
104. Lapin, work cited in note 37. 7.
105. Leonhard Lapin. Avangrad (Avant-garde). Tartu 2003. 90; Lapin, work
cited in note 18. 7.
106. Leonhard Lapin. “Saateks” (Foreword), Arhitektuur, work cited in note
37. n.p.
107. Künnapu, work cited in note 31.
108. It is with this term—environment—that Okas’ installation and his
amateur film based on the exhibition was retrospectively titled.
109. Kärt Hellermaa. “Jüri Okast ei huvita inimene, vaid keskkond” (Jüri
Okas is interested not in man, but in the environment), Hommikuleht. 1993.
May 29. 11; Jüri Okas. The Concise Dictionary of Modern Architecture: Photo-
graphs 1974–1986. Tallinn 1995.
110. See Maria Gough. “Constructivism Disoriented: El Lissitzky’s Dresden
and Hannover Demonstrationsräume,” Situating El Lissitzky. Vitebsk, Berlin,
Moscow (ed: Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed). Los Angeles 2003. 77–125.
111. Hellerma, work cited in note 109. Okas exemplified: “If you build a
house—or a society—there exists a certain situation, when there is not pos-
sible to define, if this house is either demolished or being built.”
112. See Leonhard Lapin. Masinad (Machines). Tallinn 1998. 59–62.
113. Andres Kurg. “Aru kaotanud arhitektoonid ja irooniline arhitektuur”
(Architectons gone mad and ironical architecture), Maja. 2008. 1. 62–65.
114. Ibid. 64.
115. Lapin, work cited in note 35. 16.
116. According to Yuri Soloviev, the director of VNIITE, Soviet industrial
design, i.e. technical aesthetics was “a scientific discipline that studies the
sociocultural, technological, and aesthetic problems of designing a harmo-
nious environment of objects.” Yuri Soloviev. “Tekhnicheskaia estetika”
(Technical aesthetics), Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya (Great Soviet Ency-
clopedia) (ed: A. M. Prokhorov). XXV. Moscow 1976. 527–28.
117. Lapin criticized the aspiration to totality of total design and Gesamt-
kunstwerk that has failed to create a human environment, see Lapin. “Multi­
meediumilt keskkonnale” (From multimedia to environment), Kaks kunsti,
work cited in note 35. 69.
118. Lapin, work cited in note 37. 2.
119. Lapin, work cited in note 96. 139.
120. S. Lapin, work cited in note 67.
121. Leonhard Lapin. “Masinaajastu ja kunst” (Machine-age and art),
­Kultuur ja Elu. 1973. 9. 56.
122. Lapin, work cited in note 40. 175.
123. Ibid. 177.
124. Lapin, 1977, work cited in note 99. Violence is characteristic of Lapin’s
work, see for example Feinstein, work cited in note 1. 33.
125. Lapin, 1977, work cited in note 99. 79.
126. The play was produced in the State Youth Theatre. Lapin was stage
director and artist (official co-directors were Kalju Komissaov and the artist
Tõnu Virve). Music was written by Sven Grünberg. The actors were: Eero
Spriit, Marju Mutsu and Sulev Luik.
127. Leonhard Lapin. “Teater kui multimeedium” (Theatre as multimedia)
(1975), Multiplitseeritud inimene, work cited in note 54.
128. Idem.
129. Lapin, work cited in note 117. 67.
130. Idem.
131. Lapin, work cited in note 121.
132. Lapin, work cited in note 54.
133. Lapin, work cited in note 117. 69.
134. Epp Lankots. “The Neo-Avant-Garde and the Historiographical Act,”
Atsedzot neredzamo pagātni/Recuperating the Invisible Past (ed: Ieva Astahovska).
Riga 2012. 119.
135. Sirje Helme. “In the Beginning There Was No Word,” Kaks kunsti,
work cited in note 35. 194.
136. The post-Soviet nationalist discourse has been interpreting this kind of
“reinvention” of historic tradition as a tactical maneuver, to distance itself
from the Soviet (i.e. Russian-dominated) reality, see Eha Komissarov.
“Thousand Kilometers of Abyss,” Tallinn-Moskva 1956–1985 (ed: Leonhard
Lapin and Anu Liivak). Tallinn 1996. 89–90.
137. Romuald J. Misiunas and Rein Taagepera. The Baltic States. Years of
Dependence 1940–1990. Berkeley, Los Angeles 1993. 204–50.
138. Lapin, article cited in note 40. 176.
139. It has to be noted that Constructivism certainly was not the only early
avant-garde movement that was systematically studied. In the context of the
engagement of artists with the transformation of society: such movements
as De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism as well as the Bauhaus were also of interest.
140. Piotr Piotrowski. “Modernism and Totalitarianism II. Myths of Geome­
try: Neo-Constructivism in Central Europe 1948–1970,” Artium ­Quaestiones.
2000. 11. 149. Especially geometric abstraction, that appeared belatedly in
1970s, has been interpreted as the “art of elegant” refusal, see Sirje Helme.
“Artforumi ajad” (The Times of Artforum), 1970ndate kultuuriruumi ideal-
ism. Lisandusi eesti kultuuriloole (Idealism of the Cultural Space of the 1970s.
Addenda to Estonian art history (ed: Sirje Helme). Tallinn 2002. 16.
reconstructin g art and architecture 297