The exhibition opening at Kumu will present Enno Hallek’s unique portable sunsets

Starting on 28 May, the exhibition Enno Hallek: Portable Sunset will showcase works by one of Estonia’s most significant artists in exile. The exhibition is being curated by Liisa Kaljula.

In February of this year, the artist’s daughter, Camilla Hallek, and the Art Museum of Estonia signed a deed of gift in Stockholm, by virtue of which thirteen of Enno Hallek’s works from his peak period, 1990–2010, entered the museum’s collection. At the exhibition in Kumu, the whole donation will be on display.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Hallek developed an innovative approach to painting, focusing on vividly coloured wooden objects that push beyond the picture frame into the surrounding space, inhabiting a territory somewhere between painting and sculpture. In the 1990s, the artist turned to plywood as a base material and began creating modular paintings equipped with handles, portable and playfully interchangeable, which re-conceive the very idea of a painting as a precious object meant for gallery walls.

In the centre of the exhibition is Hallek’s most prolific and internationally renowned series, Portable Sunset, which was inspired by the artist’s happy childhood in Western Estonia.

“These portable artworks also preserve Hallek’s own experience as a refugee: departing Estonia in his family’s fishing boat, he could bring with him only what mattered most: memories of the endless childhood fishing trips out at sea and the sunsets he beheld there; these constituted the future artist’s earliest aesthetic experiences,” said Liisa Kaljula, the curator of the exhibition.

Enno Hallek (1931–2025) was born in 1931 in Rohuküla, Lääne County. In 1943, he made his way to Sweden as a boat refugee, where he became a significant international artist and one of the most recognised Estonian artists in exile.

Hallek obtained his art education at the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm, where he later worked as a professor of painting. In Sweden, he is known as an author of works of art in the public space. For example, he created the mosaics on the triumphal arch in the Södermalm district of Stockholm and designed the interior of the Stadion metro station.

Among the last wishes of the artist, who died on 31 December of last year, was that the works inspired by his Rohuküla childhood should return to Estonia. Honouring another wish of the artist, a descendant of a fishing family from near Haapsalu, the art museum, in partnership with the charitable foundation Aitan Lapsi, is providing free museum lessons at the exhibition for children from Lääne County and the islands of Western Estonia.

Enno Hallek’s first solo exhibition in Estonia took place in 1990 at Kadriorg Palace and was organised by the Art Museum of Estonia. Hallek was also one of the central artists featured in the major retrospective exhibition of refugee art held at the Kumu Art Museum and the Tartu Art Museum in 2010–2011.

The exhibition Enno Hallek: Portable Sunset will remain open in the project space on the fourth floor of the Kumu Art Museum until 18 October 2026.