14.11.2025 ERR broadcasts the unveiling of Elmar Kits’s mural in the premises of the Estonian National Museum:
Since November 14, the large sgraffito panel created by Elmar Kits in 1965, which was originally made for the interior of the Tarvas restaurant in Tartu, has been on public display again in the café on the B side of the Estonian National Museum.
The panel, completed in 1965, was one of the first large-scale modernist works in post-war Estonian public space. The newspaper Edasi described in its review at the time that the artworks of the Tarvas restaurant formed a unified whole and the panel was the most influential of them. The panel was considered one of Kitse’s important works.
When the Tarvas building was scheduled for demolition in 2013, the work was removed from the wall using a special method that had not been tried in Estonia before. To protect the panel, its front surface was covered with glue and fabric, grooves were cut in the wall for the installation of metal frames, and the boards were removed along with the support. After being taken down, it was put on hold for a while until it was later donated to the Estonian National Museum.
The panels were stored in the corridor of the wood storage room at the Estonian National Museum for years. The curator of the exhibition “Who Belongs to the Night?” wanted to open one of the middle panels, which led to a thorough assessment of the condition, during which it was revealed that the plaster layer of the panel had come off badly in places and needed conservation. At the end of 2023, the opening of the fifth panel began, which became a pilot project for the restoration of the entire series.
Over the next two years, all panels were conserved. During the work, the plywood boards and metal frames were removed, the mounting foam was cleaned, the panels were turned onto a stable base, the loose back plaster was removed, cracks and voids were filled with suitable mortar mixtures, and the plaster layer was treated with deep impregnation. Then, the support was restored, the frames were cleaned, and glue and fabric residues were removed from the surface of the work.
Editor: Karmen Rebane