| Vello Agori | |
| Birth Name: | Grigori Tõnisson |
| Birth Date: | February 20, 1894 |
| Birth Place: | Pärnu, Estonia |
| Death Place: | Tallinn, Estonia |
| Resting Place: | Alexander Nevsky Cemetery, Tallinn |
| Nationality: | Estonian |
| Occupation: | Caricaturist |
Vello Agori (until 1935 Grigori Tõnisson, also known as Georg Tõnisson, pen name Gori; February 20, 1894 – October 7, 1944) was an Estonian caricaturist.
Vello Agori's father Jüri (1844–?) was a janitor at Pärnu boys' high school, and his mother Anna (née Blumenfeldt, 1860–1955) was a laundress.[1] [2] [3] He came from an Orthodox family and was baptized Grigori, but among the children he was called Gori, which was the origin of his future pseudonym as a cartoonist.[1] [2] He attended for two years, and then Pärnu city school.[2] [3] While still in school, he studied under the artist Rudolf Lepik (1881–1918).[3] [4]
Initially, Gori submitted his caricatures widely, but they were not published. To support himself, he mainly worked as a bricklayer.[5] In 1911, Gori's first twenty works were published in the magazines Sädemed and . In 1913, he settled in Tallinn and started working for the newspaper .[2]
During the First World War, in January 1915,[6] Gori was mobilized into the Russian Tsarist Army and sent to Poland. In 1915, in his first battle near Danzig,[6] he was captured by the Germans and was a German prisoner of war from 1915 to 1918. However, rumors spread in Estonia that Gori had died in the war. At the end of 1918, Päevaleht even published an obituary in which it deeply regretted the death of a brilliant talent. However, at the beginning of 1919, Gori appeared alive and well in the editorial office of Meie Mats and started working with enthusiasm. In August 1919, together with, Gori founded the newspaper . However, it ceased publication after a year because the bookseller and publisher Jakob Ploompuu first purchased Sipelgas and then acquired its editors and owners. At the same time, Gori also contributed to the paper Meie Mats and the magazine . From 1920 to 1938, he worked in the editorial office of Vaba Maa and published illustrations under the pseudonym Gori. Although Jakob Ploompuu had allowed Gori to contribute to other publications, Aleksander Veiler, the head of the Vaba Maa publishing company, did not allow this, but instead provided him with a low-cost apartment and paid him extra. Together with royalties, the cartoonist earned 50,000 marks a month with Veiler, which was equivalent to a minister's salary in the 1920s. He was the best-earning artist in Estonia.[2]
In 1928, Gori published the cartoon book Knock out, which quickly sold out. Knock-out is characterized as follows: "Your mouth is full of roaring laughter, healthy laughter, when you turn the page for the first time, but on the fifth or sixth page you are serious and delve into it as a well-known novel about social life."[7] One of the best-known drawings in Knock-out, "Demokraatia kaks palet" (The Two Faces of Democracy), has been highlighted by both and . The drawing shows a poor woman with two children looking at wealthy people drinking wine, and she says "Darling, I don't have much money to buy acetic acid" (Kuld mul pole niigi palju raha, et äädikahapet võiksin osta).[8] Tiitus believes that "the drawings may not always be related to laughter, that the social scope of the drawings may reach deep tragedy." Tiitus says that if Gori had written the caption to say 'I don't have money to buy bread' the reader would have quickly forgotten this caricature because life offered many such contrasts. Instead of the demand for a means of livelihood, which we would normally expect, there is suddenly a desire—for a means of death! From eternal misery, the only consolation—death—has shrunk, and even this cannot be fulfilled because of the appointed means of living."[9]
In 1930 and 1931, Gori participated with Otto Krusten in an international traveling exhibition, in which Gori presented ten caricatures and Krusten presented 40 caricatures. It was thanks to this traveling exhibition that Estonian caricature art rose to a respectable position in Europe.[10]
The Era of Silence that began in Estonia in 1934 ended Gori's free activities. Several of his cartoons were not published due to censorship, and some of them caused trouble in newspapers. In 1941, the Soviet occupation authorities arrested Gori, but they released him on the condition that he would criticize private traders ("speculators") and slackers in his published cartoons, and he was also forced to draw political cartoons against Estonian independence and politicians, which were published in Rahva Hääl and Sirp ja Vasar.[11]