The exhibition “Mahtra tragedy in the castellans house. Painting. Book. Story.” is open until September 12-th in the Castellan´s House Gallery. Mahtra, situated near Juuru, was one of the locations of peasant mutinies 150 years ago. Although the number of protestors was notably bigger than ever before it was still an event of small scale and thus historically insignificant. It was not recognised as an uprising worthy of attention until 44 years had gone by and Eduard Vildes novel “The Mahtra War” was released in 1902. Today everybody knows it was Vilde who “wrote” the mutiny into a war and that it was this book that made people refer to him as a classic. It can be said that Vilde and Mahtra walk hand in hand to this day. “The Mahtra War” has been a celebrated novel throughout the 20-th century. The grandest festivities took place in 1958 – on the centennial of the event itself. This undertaking may even be referred to as a festival of the “Mahtra War”. It is very likely that during the period immediately after this, every literate Estonian had read the novel

This exhibition shows the art and music made in honour of the aforementioned celebrations in 1958. The Vilde museum is proud to present works of art by Evald Okas, Olev Soans, Lepo Mikko, Alo Hoidre, Georg Markelov, Aurora Tippe and others. The exhibitions musical part comprises of pieces written by Ernesaks, Tormis, Kapp and other celebrated composers. The exhibition also facilitates examples all the editions of “The War of Mahtra”. The visitor can also find out about the way Vilde transformed the tragedy into a novel.