(b Pupastvere, nr Tartu, 6 Nov 1883; d Moscow, 14 Oct 1935). Estonian sculptor. His monumental 'Egyptian' style was influenced by the work of Amandus Adamson. He himself made granite a national Estonian material and was an influence on the art of Anton Starkopf. In 1902-5, Jaan Koort attended the workshop of Matvey Chizhov at the Baron Stieglitz Institute of Technical Drawing in St Petersburg. As a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905, he was the first of the Estonians to leave for Paris, where he spent ten years and studied under A. Mercier. He studied Classical art at the Louvre and developed a special interest in Egyptian art. After returning to Estonia, he became good friends with Konrad M?gi, Nikolay Triik and Kristjan Raud. His first major work was a portrait in basalt of his wife (1916; Tallinn, A. Mus.). This work unites naturalism with the fictionalization of reality in the Neo-classical spirit of Auguste Rodin. From the 1920s Koort was influenced by the German Expressionism of Wilhelm Lemburg, as shown by At Prayer (rosewood, 1921; Tallinn, A. Mus.) and Woman Kneeling (marble; Paris, Pal. Luxembourg). Attention to the inner life of the subject, typical of northern art, was combined in Koort's work with French elegance in the study of form, and in this respect he is similar to A. J. A. L. Poupla and L. Dejean. In the same period, Koort worked on studies of children (e.g. Ra Koort, plaster, 1917; bronze, 1923; Tallinn, A. Mus.). Like Amandus Adamson, he adapted the same compositions from one material to another, thereby creating stylistic opportunities for the use of different techniques. Around 1920 he worked on the design for a sculpture personifying the Estonian people, which resulted in Old Estonian Man (grey granite, 1923). From the mid-1920s Koort came into conflict with his colleagues as a result of a lack of commissions, and from 1927 he began to experiment in ceramics. At the same time he also completed works with animal subjects: Pig (ceramics, 1929; Tallinn, A. Mus.); Roe Deer (bronze, 1929; Tallinn, A. Mus.; copy in Vaksali Steet). In 1934 he was invited to work for the ceramics factory in Gzhel, a district of Ramenskoye, near Moscow, but died soon afterwards.
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