Landscape in my Studio Window

This work expresses Subbi’s persistence in landscape. Although his studio was located in central Tallinn, the view from the window was an open canvas that in this case is filled with a lush green landscape of fields. Landscape for Subbi is a state of mind, something which is always present as an “earthy” way of thought. In this composition we also find several Subbi elements that are repeated in various paintings. One is the brown armchairs that followed him from one studio to another and are present in several important paintings. Two vases full of flowers adorn his studio table, a companion to Subbi’s work since his early paintings and a reference to the still-life tradition. Self-reference crops up in the details of two of his earlier works that hung on the walls of his studio; these were often important works that he chose to keep with him. Open Window (1974) is one of the paintings that also hung in Subbi’s first studio in the Pikk Jalg tower. The complex composition is the first time that the combination of many of his painterly focuses come together as a harmonious whole. Another is Green Slope (2010), which must have been freshly finished and hung on the wall for Subbi to begin a new canvas. Painted in 2010–2011, Landscape in my Studio Window is a late painting in which he looks back on his own career and successes as a part of his parallel reality of colourful harmony.