Valdur Ohakas

Ohakas started showing his works at exhibitions in 1946, and in 1959 he became a member of the Artists Union of the Estonian SSR.^[5] Ohakas participated in the renewal of Estonian art in the 1960s, and he was in close contact with Ülo Sooster and many artists from Tartu and Tallinn.^[5] The height of Ohakas's work was the 1960s and 1970s, when romantic landscapes were central to his versatile creations.^[5]

Ohakas's work in the late 1950s was characterized by the "harsh style" (Estonian: karm stiil)^[6] (e.g., Pirita, 1959). At the beginning of the 1960s, he mainly cultivated still lifes, in which color and the light–dark contrast become increasingly important (e.g., Natüürmort kaladega 'Still Life with Fish', 1965; Vanad asjad 'Old Things', 1968). Starting with the end of the 1960s, his geometrizing style often reached the point of being abstract or surreal (e.g., Natüürmort kannuga 'Still Life with a Pitcher', 1970; Linn 'City', 1973; Antiik 'Antiquity', 1974). In the 1960s and 1970s, romantic landscape visions took center stage (e.g., Mütoloogiline maastik 'Mythological Landscape', 1971; Järvede org sügisel 'Valley of Lakes in Autumn', 1978; Tee 'Road', 1982).