RAUL MEEL
TALLINN, ESTONIA
Raul Meel is one of the famous, award and world wide known Estonian painter and graphic artist, sculptor, installation and fire-performance artist, prose writer (concrete poetry), visual and sound poet. He has published 250 concrete poetry, visual poetry and sound poetry books and more than 50 albums in different languages.
He studied to be an engineer-electrician. He worked as an electrician 1959-1961, as a tare weigher 1962–1987, as a master in an experimental graphic art studio 1987-1990, and after that as a freelance artist. He was a persona non-grata in art during the Soviet era, although still known beyond the Iron Curtain. During the heyday of graphic art (1962–1980), he was the only Estonian artist who was a member of the International Club of the Prize Winners of the International Print Biennials. Raul Meel is found in the Top Artists list at Angel Museum, USA. Member of Estonian Artists´ Association.
KEY EXHIBITIONS
Altogether more than 600 general and group-exhibitions, and more than 100 solo exhibitions and 26 fire-performances. Among them:
1972, Venice Art Biennale, curator’s exhibition, Italy;
1979, World Art Competition: New Talents and Ideas, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (37 artists, art critics’ award);
1992, solo exhibition in Gallery International Images Ltd., Sewickley, USA;
1994, Raul Meel and Leonhard Lapin, Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France (paintings and sculpture);
1997, solo exhibition Vita aboriginum, Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia;
2000, Realities and Utopias, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey, USA (paintings, 8 artists);
2010, solo exhibition Estonian Dialogue, Henry van de Velde’s Art Library, Gent, Belgium (visual & sound poetry);
2014, retrospective solo exhibition Dialogues with Infinity, Art Museum of Estonia (Kumu), Tallinn, Estonia;
2015, Biennale Internazionale Di Carta / Papermade, Schio, Vicenza, Italy, as a guest of honor and, so to speak, as the „godfather“ of the 2015-2016´s exhibition;
2017, Symmetrical worlds – mirrored symmetries, Ylo Sooster, Juri Sobolev, Tõnis Vint and Raul Meel, Art Museum of Estonia (Kumu), Tallinn, Estonia;
2022, Thinking Pictures, Art Museum of Estonia (Kumu), Tallinn, Estonia, in cooperation with Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (USA)
LINKS
https://cca.ee/kunstnike-andmebaas/raul-meel
WORKS ARE PRESENTED
Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, Estonia; National Museum of Cracow, Poland; Cremona Foundation, Maryland, USA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA; Baltic Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; Finnish Museum of Modern Art, Helsinki, Finland; Lahti Art Museum, Lahti, Finland; Georges Pompidou Art Centre, Paris, France; Louisiana Museum, Denmark; Veranneman Foundation, Belgium; private collections
ARTIST VOICE
(from Raul Meel memory notes, written in 2019)
“I was a member of the Club of the Prize Winners of the International Print Biennials (CLUB). The winners of 11 main biennials in the art world at the time could be invited to become members of the CLUB. The top exhibitions were: a) Krakow, b) Ljubljana, c)Tokyo, d) São Paulo, e) Bradford, f) Liège, g) Paris, h) Grenchen, i) Banská Bystrica, j) Lugano and k) Venice. The aim of CLUB was to establish and maintain the prestige of the main awards in graphic art. The boom of graphic art in the early 1960s brought about numerous annual exhibitions, biennials, triennials, etc. The members of the CLUB included: Miro, Moore, Rauschenberg, Fontana, Warhol, Stella, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein, Hockney, Hartung, Soulages, Alechinsky, Kirchner, LeWitt, Rusha, Matta, etc… Not all of them are primarily known as graphic artists, several are better known as painters, sculptors, installation artists… In 1972 I was sent the official CLUB list of members which vanished without a trace somewhere in the Soviet postal system; I learned about the list only later in a letter. When I was enlisted the CLUB had been active for 8 years and had 80 members. Each year a dozen or so artists were admitted. In the Soviet Union only two artists had qualified – one very loyal to the authorities, and myself. The members have occasionally arranged exhibitions of their works. In 1972-73 one such exhibition toured the significant art centres: Paris, Amsterdam, London, New York, Sao Paulo… I was able to send some pictures to that exhibition, which later became totally impossible”.
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