NOBA Nordic Baltic contemporary art platform

Kumu Art Museum has opened Twilight Geometry, the first major retrospective of renowned Estonian artist Mari Kurismaa. The exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the artist’s multifaceted practice, spanning painting, interior architecture, graphic art, actions, artist’s books, and slide programs.

On view are some of Kurismaa’s most celebrated paintings—works that have long since entered the canon of Estonian art—alongside early experimental pieces, architectural drawings, and textile and costume designs, many of which are being shown publicly for the first time.

Kurismaa’s metaphysical painting draws upon references to antiquity and postmodern architectural thought. As curator Mari Laanemets notes, geometry plays a central role in the artist’s work—not as a rigid ordering system, but as a poetic language in which emotional sensitivity intertwines with intellectual depth. Kurismaa’s artistic vision has been shaped by Tartu’s neoclassical urban landscape as well as Baltic-German manor culture, and her works often enter into dialogue with the forms and layered memories of the past.

As the title suggests, Twilight Geometry inhabits the transitional realm of dusk—a moment when boundaries blur and new meanings quietly emerge.