Karin Luts

Biography

In 1937 the Estonian Ministry of Economy commissioned Karin Luts to design a woven wall hanging (a Gobelin) for the Estonian pavilion at the World’s Fair in Paris. It was woven by a weaver named Friedeman, and at the fair the work won a gold medal.

Karin Luts was born on 29 April 1904 in Riidaja, the daughter of a teacher, Andres Luts, and Juuli Mari Luts (née Gentalen). Besides her, the family included sisters Lonny and Meta and a brother, Elmar; Meta became a well-known actress. Her cousin on her mother’s side was the artist Julius Gentalen. She finished the Pärnu Estonian School Society Progymnasium in 1922. Her drawing teacher there was Konstantin Süvalo, who also advised her to apply to the Pallas Art College in Tartu. At Pallas she first studied painting under Konrad Mägi, and after his death in the studio of Ado Vabbe. From 1923 Magnus Zeller taught there, and from him she learned drypoint, etching and lithography. She finished the course in 1928, and the scholarship awarded on graduation allowed her to spend 1928–1929 in Paris, at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière with André Lhote.

From the autumn of 1929 Luts worked in Tallinn as a freelance artist. She designed costumes, worked as a costume designer for the Drama Theatre, and illustrated books, among them Eduard Visnapuu’s children’s book “Loomade talu” (“The Animal Farm”, 1933 or 1934). From 1935 she took up textile designs. In the same year she visited Finland and, together with the artist Andrus Johani, Denmark. Her first article on art appeared in 1938: a review of an exhibition of Italian women artists held in Tallinn at the end of 1937.

In 1939 she was admitted to the Pallas art society, together with Aino Bach and Salome Trei.

In the spring of that year, as a scholarship holder of the Tallinn Women’s Club, she travelled to Italy: Vienna, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Rome, Naples and a month on Capri. In Rome she worked in the studio of the Italian woman artist Countess Mola. The trip left her a series of landscapes of Capri and Venice painted in tempera. In October 1939, at the first survey exhibition of women artists, she showed her tempera works and landscapes for the first time, alongside several drypoint prints. In the autumn she intended to return to Italy, but the war prevented it. In the academic year 1940–1941 she taught in Tartu at the Konrad Mägi State Art College.

On 21 March 1944 Luts married the philologist Professor Peeter Arumaa, and in the same year they fled the Soviet occupation to Sweden. They received Swedish citizenship in the 1950s. In exile she worked a great deal, organised exhibitions of Estonian artists and wrote about art. In her search for contact with modern art she turned both to abstraction and to a Surrealist manner. In Stockholm she held small solo exhibitions in 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1955, took part in group shows in Finland, Denmark, the United States and Italy, and illustrated books, including an Estonian anthology by Betti Alver (1945) and August Gailit’s novel “Flammande hjärta” (“The Burning Heart”, 1955). In the mid-1950s, besides painting, she took up graphic art in earnest. She attended graphic art courses in Stockholm (by some accounts in 1960–1968) and later studied in Salzburg. Printmaking brought her attention and international recognition. From 1963 she was a member of the Swedish Society of Women Artists, and from 1964 of the Swedish Artists’ Association.

Karin Luts died in Stockholm on 14 May 1993. She bequeathed her paintings and prints to the Tartu Art Museum, and her diaries and correspondence to the Estonian Literary Museum. Among the conditions of the will were a survey exhibition and the publication of a monograph. The exhibition “Karin Luts: Conflicts and Confessions” took place in Tartu in 2004, and her painting “Comédie-Française” (1939) is shown on an Estonian postage stamp of 2018.