Raul Meel

Raul Meel (born 2 March 1941) is an Estonian artist and concrete poet whose work spans printmaking, painting, sculpture, installation art, performance art and artists' books. A self-taught artist who studied electrical engineering, he emerged in the late 1960s as one of the best-known figures of the Estonian avant-garde. His work has been associated with conceptual art, minimalism and concrete poetry, and Europeana has described him as one of the first proponents of concrete poetry in the former Eastern bloc. Works by Meel are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, and the Art Museum of Estonia. His honours include the Order of the White Star, Fourth Class, and Estonia's national Lifetime Achievement Award for Culture.

Early life and education Raul Meel was born at Reino farm in the village of Jalase, then in Raikküla Parish, Harju County, now located in Rapla Parish, Rapla County. Meel studied electrical engineering at Tallinn Technical University from 1959 to 1964.

Institutional recognition in Estonia broadened in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods.

Work Meel is especially known for typewriter drawings, screenprints, artists' books and text-based visual structures that combine language and image. Another widely reproduced work, Singing Tree, is a typewriter drawing and screenprint built from words arranged into a visual image; Europeana and the Art Museum of Estonia have highlighted it as a key example of Meel's concrete poetry.

Later work expanded into fire performances and artists' books.

Exhibitions and collections Meel's work has appeared in numerous international museum and survey exhibitions since the early 1970s. In 2007 he was awarded the Order of the White Star, Fourth Class. In 2015 he was one of the recipients of Estonia's national Lifetime Achievement Award for Culture.