The book accompanies the exhibition Spiegel im Spiegel: Encounters Between Estonian and German Art from Lucas Cranach to Arvo Pärt and Gerhard Richter at the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden (8 May – 31 August 2025), and at the Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn (24 October 2025 – 12 April 2026).

The Art Museum of Estonia and the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden) present an ambitious collaborative exhibition exploring the intersections of Estonian and German/Saxon art in history. Visitors are invited on an odyssey, framed by a dialogue between two great figures, the German painter Gerhard Richter and the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. The journey is enriched with insights into the history of the medieval Hanseatic League, Dresden Romantics and the Baltic German community, 20th-century art and a number of contemporary interventions.

The book gives an overview of twelve carefully selected dialogic themes in the exhibition that throw light on Germans and Estonians’ self-understandings, while paintings, graphic works, objects, videos and installations mirror, and are mirrored in, each another.