Villem Ormisson
Estonian, 1892-1941
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Villem Ormisson was an Estonian painter and art educator.
Villem Ormisson studied at the Heine Progymnasium in Viljandi and at the Riga City Art School from 1910 to 1914. In 1922, he studied art for two months in Berlin and Dresden.
At the Riga City Art School he studied drawing under Jānis Tilbergs and painting under Vilhelms Purvītis, both graduates of the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. From Purvītis, the most famous Baltic landscape painter of his time, he acquired a superb skill for depicting the colourfulness of air and water, which remained unsurpassed in Estonian art during his lifetime.
He first Exhibition was in February 1914 at the 4th Estonian Art Exhibition organised by Noor-Eesti at the Vanemuine Theatre in Tartu.
From the autumn of 1914, he worked as an art teacher in several schools in Viljandi (the longest - eight years - in the girls' gymnasium of the Viljandi Estonian Educational Society), and then from 1926 as a drawing and painting teacher in the Pallas Higher Art School in Tartu, where he was also assistant to the director from 1929 to 1940.
As assistant headmaster, his duties included everything to do with the life of the students, and he solved any troubles that arose in an extremely fair manner. As a painting instructor, Villem Ormisson was very discreet, never over-painting the students' work or forcing them to do as he wished, nor did he particularly like to theorise about art. He avoided emotional judgements when evaluating works - he never said bad things directly, but he was also stingy with praise. Most of the top artists who entered Estonian art in the 1930s received their painting training from Ormisson.
He joined the Pallas Art Society in 1920 and exhibited there. He was the chairman of the art association in 1927-1928 (vice-chairman 1928-1930), 1930-1931 and 1935-1936.
Shocked by the upheavals of history, Villem Ormisson committed suicide in 1941.