Juhan Kangilaski was born on 19 May 1904 in Verilaske, Vana-T\u00e4nassilma Parish, Viljandi County.\nJuhan and his younger brother, Ott, studied at the Pallas Art School. Juhan studied at Ado Vabbe\u2019s\nstudio, in Pallas, between 1923 and 1927. After moving from Tartu to Viljandi, he devoted himself\nto the Ugala Theatre in the following years, designing slightly more than a hundred productions\nbetween 1929 and 1937. At the same time, Kangilaski drew caricatures for the newspaper Sakala,\nand in the early 1940s he wrote reviews of the Viljandi art scene.<\/p>\n
After working at Uga for eight years, Juhan Kangilaski worked as a freelancer for a while. At the\n1939 Autumn Exhibition, his painting depicting the proclamation of the Manifesto of Independence\nwas exhibited for the first time. In an interview given at the exhibition, the artist lamented that,\nhaving been involved with the theatre for a long time, he had little time left for freelance work, i.e.\nfor painting. The artist was also linked to Ugala later on: From 1939\u20131945 he worked as the\nadministrator, and from 1948\u20131950 again as a designer at Ugala. Beginning in 1950 Juhan\nKangilaski lived in Tallinn, where he continued to work as an advertising artist. In the 1960s, he\nproduced graphic art, made landscape paintings in linocut and illustrated books. He died on 20\nMarch 1981, in Tallinn.<\/p>\n
Proclamation of Estonian independence, in Viljandi, on 24 February 1918 (1939, oil). A unique\nwork of art and one of the few that captures historical-political events. As far as is known, no\nphotographs of the event have survived, so it had to be reconstructed from the memories of\ncontemporaries. Kangilaski has said that it was difficult to depict the event as a whole in a painting.\nThe Manifesto of Independence was read out in Viljandi by the mayor of the time, Gustav Talts\n(1890\u20131958). The work was hidden for 67 years in a house on Edela Street, in Viljandi. The\npainting which was painted on plywood was used for the ceiling of the second floor cupboard,\nprobably because of its dimensions \u2013 112 x 180 cm. The painting was purchased by the Viljandi\ntown government in 2016.<\/p>\n