“Happiness is not for us, sons of a poor land,” wrote the Estonian artist Konrad Mägi (1878–1925). “For us, art is the only way out, because when the soul is filled with the eternal suffering of life, art will provide what life cannot give us. There, in art, in one’s own oeuvre, can one find peace.” Mägi lived in many places. In 1903, he left Estonia to study art in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was influenced by Nicholas Roerich. In 1906, he began to travel, moving through Denmark, Norway, France, and Italy, painting landscapes that verge on the metaphysical. Mägi died young, at 46, but may have produced as many as 400 works. An early modernist, his art was condemned by the Soviets during the Second World War and banned. When political austerity relaxed in the 1950s, it returned to galleries and museums. In London, 60 Mägi paintings—from radiant skies to emotionally charged portraits—come together. —Elena Clavarino