Leonhard Lapin

Leonhard Lapin (born 29 December 1947) is a versatile Estonian artist who has been active in fine art, art theory and architecture as well as in literature. He is considered one of Estonia's leading artists.

Lapin was born in Räpina, Estonia (then part of the Soviet Union) in 1947. He studied architecture at the Estonian Academy of Arts from 1966 to 1971.

Apart from working as an architect, he also did artworks in pop art in the late 1960s, influenced by Andy Warhol, and was involved in organizing the SOUP 69 exhibition in Tallinn in 1969.

Lapin became a key member of the so-called "Tallinn school" of avant-gardist architecture which operated from 1972 to around 1985. It started with a manifesto, written in Tallinn in 1972 titled "Programme for an Exhibition of New Architecture", signed by Lapin together with Tiit Kaljundi, Vilen Künnapu, Avo-Himm Looveer and Ülevi Eljand. The "school" was later seen as culturally significant in the Estonian critique of Soviet politics and the ultimate emergence of an independent Estonian state. They wrote about the failure of Soviet modern architecture and city planning, and the uniformity of prefabricated housing areas surrounding Tallinn. In terms of their own "architectural style", the Tallinn avant-gardists were seen as postmodernists, similar in form language to American architects such as Robert Venturi and Peter Eisenman, though Lapin made more references to the aesthetic style of Russian Constructivism. Writing about Lapin's contribution, Georg Schöllhammer wrote: "Lapin's panel of a Tallinn silhouette created from cliches of Constructivism, his 'Cemetery of Suprematism' are like cynical epitaphs to the Soviet Union." Lapin said of his own attitude to what they were doing:

"In 1978 we presented 'pure ideas', as our aim was to show architecture as an independent form of art, a manifestation of the spiritual, but also as an independent and influential feature that played a part in social processes."

...
Wikipedia