VILEN KÜNNAPU

Vilen Künnapu is an architect and an artist, born in Tallinn in 1948. He graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 1971.

Künnapu is the author of many fascinating buildings. Together with his partner Ain Padrik he has won several awards at international architectural competitions and published articles in various journals. He has displayed his installations at the Venice Biennale and at London’s architecture festival. He has been visiting professor at Scandinavian, British and Swiss universities, also at the University of Tartu and the Tallinn University of Applied Sciences. In 2013 he opened his first exhibition of paintings.

MINA

When I design houses I feel like an artist, and when I paint I feel like an architect. I very much enjoy both, although painting is probably the centre of everything. My aim is a feeling that lies behind houses and paintings. I am painting this feeling, not exactly knowing what it is. Maybe I paint strength or perhaps energy. I like the mystical, but in my art I try to manage without too much esoteric. I would like to carry on the timeless journey of classical painting.

PLAZA

I am fond of such artists as Fra Angelico, Gauguin, Bonnard, de Chirico, Matisse, Clemente, Thibault and others. I like the art of people who are close to nature (after all, Estonians are like that as well) and icons.

I believe in the healing power of art and architecture. I also believe that by giving shape to your thoughts you can create whatever, and I believe that the thoughts must be pure.

TIGUTORN

Why do I value painting above all?

In my view, painting is the best way to connect the hand, the heart and the sky.

Painting is magic. It is a link with heavenly powers. It was thus in the Stone Age, and it is the same today.

SANTORINI 2

In 2009 my wife and I flew to the island of Santorini where we rented a flat in Oia village. For some time I had felt a pull towards that mystical island. In front of the house with cylindrical arches was a kidneyshaped pool. Its terrace offered views of a cubist village in the south and a large empty field behind the building, with gentle slopes towards the north until the sea.

The pool terrace became the focus of our trip. We sunbathed, read, my drawings and watercolours were born there.

SANTORINI 3

We took long walks from there, and I made quick sketches. Ten Santorini watercolours saw the light of day by the pool. These, in turn, developed into acrylic paintings, and this is how I became a painter. It was probably the remarkable spirit of Atlantis that evoke an artist in me. Colours, composition and style just emerged from somewhere. True, already 40 years ago I could do watercolours, and also dabbled in installations as a supplement of the architect’s job.

On Santorini I clearly felt that some sort of hidden information inside me was trying to find an output. And it burst out in painting, on that magical island.

SANTORINI 4

I have developed the style established on Santorini in motifs of Tallinn’s old town, Manhattan, Morocco, Andalusia, Sicily and Malta, although Santorini will always be the foundation where I keep returning in my search for new motifs.

I painted the ensembles I saw to suit myself. It means that an architect has his own dreams, and he is lucky to realise 10 per cent at best.

When I paint historical buildings, I imagine I am an ancient architect who once built them. I never paint exactly what I see. Instead, I provide the generalised structures with their own style by means of colours, new windows and doors, and something else. Painting can therefore also be a project, more precisely an ideal project.

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www.vilenkunnapu.pri.ee