Andrus Rõuk (born 28 September 1957, in

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

) is an

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

n artist and poet. In 1981, in the 9th number of the literary journal ''

Looming ''Looming'' is a term found in the study of perception, as it relates directly to psychology. Looming occurs when an object begins moving closer to the eye. As the resulting image becomes increasingly larger on the perceiver's retina, i.e., when ...

'' his poem "Silmades taevas ja meri" ("In the eyes sky and sea") appeared. It is an

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

: the first letters of the verses read "SINIMUSTVALGE" ("blue-black-white"), the colours of the national

flag of Estonia The national flag of Estonia () is a tricolour (flag), tricolour featuring three equal horizontal triband (flag), bands of blue at the top, black in the centre, and white at the bottom. The flag is called () in Estonian. The tricolour was alrea ...

(at a time when Estonia was occupied and the use of national flag was forbidden; the Soviet flag of Estonia was mostly red with some blue and white). For this he was excluded from the Estonian State Institute of Arts (currently

Estonian Academy of Arts The Estonian Academy of Arts (Estonian language, Estonian: ''Eesti Kunstiakadeemia'', EKA) is the only public university in Estonia providing higher education in art, design, architecture, Media (communication), media, art history and conservation ...

). Teet Kallas. "Sinimustvalge sügis 1981". In: ''

'' 1998, 4, pp 617–625.

References

1957 births Living people 20th-century Estonian male artists 20th-century Estonian artists 21st-century Estonian male artists 21st-century Estonian artists Estonian male poets Artists from Tallinn Writers from Tallinn 20th-century Estonian poets 21st-century Estonian poets Recipients of the Order of the White Star, 4th Class {{Estonia-painter-stub