July 27, 1942 Nazis murdered Estonian artist Karl Pärsimägi
Estonian painter Karl Pärsimägi was killed by Nazis July 27, 1942.
He was arrested by the Gestapo while living in Paris and shipped to Auschwitz where he died. For decades his art was ignored by the Estonian government, then under Soviet control. With Estonian independence came a renewed interest in his works.
Pärsimägi, who his contemporaries remembered as a contradictory, introverted person, tended to wear ragged, simple clothes, yet in his art he lived with incredible force, passion, fantasy and elegance. “When I look at Pärsimägi’s works I can’t help but regard all of the formal innovations as a kind of admission, a flamboyance that he could only indulge in through paint,” writes Harry Tafoya. https://noba.ac/en/exhibition/karl-parsimagi-ars-longa/
A Girl and the Moon, Karl Pärsimägi (1936)
Issued by Estonian in 2015
Part of the Treasures from the Estonian Art Museum set
Designer: Lembit Lõhmus
Despite his short life, Karl Pärsimäe’s work was fruitful – more than 500 works of art have been preserved from him.
Since he supported Estonia’s independence, the Soviet Union did not officially recognize his work. In those years, Pärsimäe’s paintings became symbols of Western modernism and creative freedom, which young artists secretly but highly valued.
Now, more than 100 years after his birth, many of Pärsimäe’s works belong to Estonian museums, especially Tartu Art Museum and Estonian Art Museum to the collection. Although the stormy first decades of the 20th century decided the fate of Karl Pärsimägi, his art lives on today and can be admired by new generations.
https://www.europeana.eu/et/stories/estonian-artist-karl-paersimaegi
Last year’s SOD included one of my all time favourites: