Conference Konrad Mägi 145

The international conference commemorating the 145^th anniversary of the birth of Konrad Mägi was held on 1 November at the Heino Eller Music School in Tartu. The performers were Pilvi Kalhama, director of the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Timo Huusko, Senior Curator of the Ateneum Art Museum and Nils Ohlsen, Director of the Lillehammer Art Museum, also Eero Epner, member of the Board of the Konrad Mägi Foundation. The conference was followed by the awarding of the Konrad Mägi Foundation Annual Prize for 2023 and the presentation of a postage stamp from the treasures of the Art Museum of Estonia depicting Konrad Mägi’s Portrait of Marie Reisik.

Conference

The conference was opened by Enn Kunila, Chairman of the Board of the Konrad Mägi Foundation and Urmas Klaas, the Mayor of Tartu.

Eero Epner spoke about the activities of the Konrad Mägi Foundation over the past few years and the strategies that the Foundation has chosen in Estonia and abroad.Timo Huusko analysed Mägi’s landscape paintings. He explored ways in which Mägi brought emotions to his canvases and which means he used on that journey.
Pilvi Kalhama, who curated the largest Konrad Mägi exhibition of all time in Espoo (2021), spoke about the breaking of canons and the power of resistance in Mägi’s oeuvre.
Nils Ohlsen, who curated the last large solo exhibition of Mägi’s works abroad (2022), spoke in greater detail about Konrad Mägi’s time in Saaremaa and drew parallels with similar relocations to the seashore on islands by members of the Die Brücke art movement. Ohlsen asked whether that was a random coincidence or a separate phenomenon.
The presentations were followed by a panel discussion between all the conference speakers on the oeuvre of Konrad Mägi.
Soon the presentations will be available here.

Presentations

Konrad Mägi and European art history
Eero Epner

Pictorial Space and Internal Spectator. Romanticism and Modernism in Konrad Mägi’s Landscapes
Timo Huusko

Breaking Canons: The Power of Dissidence in Konrad Mägi’s Oeuvre
Pilvi Kalhama

Konrad Mägi and the “Brücke” at the Baltic Sea – just a coincidence or a phenomenon?
Nils Ohlsen

Awarding the Konrad Mägi Foundation Prize

On the same day the Konrad Mägi Foundation Award was given to Nils Ohlsen, director of the Lillehammer Art Museum. The news about the award can be reached here.

The presentation of a postage stamp

A postage stamp from the treasures of the Art Museum of Estonia depicting Konrad Mägi’s Portrait of Marie Reisik, 1916 was presented. Marie Reisik was an active member and organiser in the women’s movement and a good friend of Mägi. This is probably the most psychological and personal female portrait by Mägi.