Viilup, Aleksei

Aleksei Viilup designed exhibitions, engaged in portrait and decorative paintings and, he excelled in the design of posters. He was born in the town of Valga in southern Estonia. During the period of the 1930s until about 1940, a surge of interest in the graphic arts blossomed in Estonia. Works created in this period often used moderate elements of nationalism accompanied by strong composition. Viilup's chief interest was art and he graduated in 1941 from the state-run School of Applied Arts named for Estonian artist Jaan Koort. His field of study was painting. During the Second World War, Viilup worked as an artist in the studio Voldemar Tomassov, an Estonian designer. In 1946, Aleksei Viilup was elected into the Artists' Union of the USSR.