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Malle Leis was born on a summer day in July 1940 in Viljandi. Due to her father’s occupation as a dairyman, the family travelled around Estonia from dairy to dairy both before and after the war, often changing residences. It can be assumed that Malle Leisi's great interest and love for nature dates back to her early childhood. Leis spent most of her school years in Pärnu, where she studied at the 2nd Secondary School named after Lydia Koidula. There, a well-functioning art circle, supervised by Meeta Viks, who studied at the Pallas Art School art school became decisive for her future.
In the 1960s, when as a young artist, after graduating from the Tartu Secondary School (1958-1961) and the Estonian Academy of Arts (1961-1967), she started her creative journey, a pop culture revolution was underway the art world.
Pop art had become a symbol of a new era that was rebelling against the previous conservative high culture and took its place in the art world as a kind of ideological shift with previous paradigms being replaced with new ones.
In the context of the Soviet Union, the 1960s could also be seen as a groundbreaking era during which overcoming old boundaries and renewing the artistic language became a challenge for the new generation. After the Social Realism and austere style the 1950s and 1960s, Malle Leis's colourful and optimistic approach felt really fresh and innovative. Nobody in Estonia had seen anything like this in art before, and Leis's paintings were truly fresh, Western and inspired by the world-conquering pop art spirit, but also by the free-spirited and upbeat hippie movement. Brightly painted flowers, rainbows and abstract compositions were the images that defined her work send until the end. As a child of the hippie era, Leis's work reflects the bright and colourful aesthetics that seemed to be part of an eternal and endless summer, which took us back to our childhood when the grass was greener and colours were brighter.
Malle Leis was a member of the ANK 64 art collective that was active from 1964 to 1969. The members of this association of artists were connected to the underground artists in Moscow and Leningrad. If, in those cities, experimenting with art was prohibited and considered to be an underground activity, in Estonia, which was considered a kind of Soviet West, the artists were under fewer constraints, although compromises had to be made in Estonia as well.
Art scholars have also seen connections with independence and a desire for freedom in Malle Leis’s work, as well as a rebellion against the reality of the 1960s and 1970s.
Even in her later work, Leis remained faithful to the happy world she had created. However, during her lifetime, she also experimented with various techniques from graphic art to watercolours. Her signature technique is a unique style of silk-screen printing that combines techniques from painting and graphic art. If the development of graphic art introduced the possibility of extremely rapidly printing and distributing art works and, in the West, thousands of artists’ screen prints were produced, then Leis was charmed not by large circulation, but the technical capabilities of graphic art and its clean and clear lines. Thus, in Leis’s work, one can also find exclusive graphic pages, of which only single copies have been produced.
One of the central elements of Leis's work, both in painting and graphics, has been a continued interest in plant motifs and nature. At first glance, the flora depicted by Leis may seem simple and decorative, but deep philosophical reflections can also be perceived under the depiction of the rich beauty of nature, in which a leaf that sprouts in the spring becomes fruit in the autumn and birth turns into death. In these works, one can seek a depiction of the cycle of life and the mysteries that accompany it.
From 1987 to 2003, she was a member of the prestigious artists' association of the Royal Botanic Society in Great Britain, and her works have attracted international attention. As the only Estonian to date, two of Malle Leis’s paintings were sold by Sotheby’s, one of the world’s top auction houses.
One of the largest Malle Leis collections abroad is located in the Norton Dodge Collection at the Zimmerli Museum in the United States, which currently has 44 works by Leis. Her works can also be found in the collections of the following museums: the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; Thessaloniki, the National Museum of Greece, where they ended up as part of the Georg Costakis Collection; the Art Museum of Estonia; the Tartu Art Museum; as well as numerous private collections.
As an artist, Malle Leis can be considered one of the most productive artists of her generation. Her life's work includes more than 50 personal exhibitions in Estonia and abroad, as well as numerous awards and recognitions. In 2001, he was awarded the White Star 4th class decoration. In addition, she has received the Kristjan Raud Award and the annual award of the Estonian Cultural Foundation.
In a short film from the ERR video archive you can watch in more detail
Malle Leis and Villu Jõgeva working in the unique screen printing technique they invented. Malle Leis 1980, Võrumaa IX, Serigraphy", length
00:20:34, director: Peeter Urbla. Video available HERE.