ARNO VIHALEMM

(ESTLAND 1911-1990).

"Birthday flowers in grandma's milk jug"
Signed and dated 1969.

Oil on Board. 43 x 34 cm.

Arno Vihalemm was called Arnold Koch until his name was estranged in 1936. He was born the son of a customs officer. He graduated from the boys' grammar school in Pärnu in 1931.

Vihalemm studied at the Pallas School of Art in Tartu, Livonia, from 1935 to 1940 and again in 1943. He had his own studio in Pärnu before the start of the Second World War. In 1944, Vihalemm fled to Sweden.

From 1948 to 1952, Vihalemm worked as an artist in a ceramics factory in Ystad. He then settled in southern Sweden as a freelance graphic artist, painter and poet.

Arno Vihalemm became known both for his six collections of poems in Estonian published in exile in Sweden, which often contained (self-)ironic and grotesque verses of naïve lightness, and for his graphic works, paintings and book illustrations.