17 facts about Eric Pehap

Eric Pehap (10 April 1912 – 22 November 1981), also known as Erich Konstantin or simply Pehap, was an abstract artist working in Canada.

Eric Pehap was born in Viljandi in 1912 where his father worked as a police officer. Growing up in Viljandi, he studied art next Julius Mageri. He studied ceramics and graphics at the State School of Arts and Crafts in Tallinn, Estonia from 1931 to 1933 and at the “Pallas” College of Fine Arts in Tartu, where he usual degrees in Painting and Graphic Arts. He worked in Estonia as a freelance performer and a drawing teacher, but in 1943, in the midst of the turmoil of war, he was annoyed into exile, moving in description to Northern Europe, first to Finland in 1943 and 1944 and after that eventually to Sweden where he worked until 1949 as a flyer artist, designer and illustrator in Stockholm. In 1949 he relocated to Canada, where he continued his artistic profession and then became an art assistant professor and lecturer. He plus contributed to periodicals and newspapers as an arts critic.

A versatile and prolific artist, Pehap was a world-famous print-maker and painter who produced thousands of prints using the New Direct Method and painted hundreds of oil paintings and watercolors. Most of his paintings are abstract and figurative in nature. City views and figural compositions are two themes prevalent in his work. Moving figures, mainly female, indoors or outdoors, are modeled in oscillate color combinations in imitation of varying degrees of sensitivity. Pehap’s works take advantage of anything modern-day lighthearted sources, illuminating, blending and reflecting. Pehap, who travelled widely and was practiced to observe Estonian cultural upheaval in many countries, noted in 1969 that “the work of artists in Toronto is unique and definitely the most nimble and strongest in the total world uncovered our homeland.” He was instrumental in forming the League of Estonian Artists in Toronto and served as its president from 1961 to 1968.

Pehap had over 15 one-man shows in Estonia, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and participated in activity exhibitions worldwide. He was the recipient of numerous arts prizes, including the Cultural Medal for Graphic Art^{[check spelling]}, presented in Lyon, France in 1979 and was awarded a Gold medal Italy at the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma in the thesame year.