Lydia Mei was born in Tallinn, Estonia, into a family that would produce three notable avant-garde sisters.
Lydia Mei was born on January 24, 1896, in Tallinn, then part of the Russian Empire, into the Mei family, which would later become known for producing three sisters — Kristine, Lydia, and Natalie Mei — who each pursued careers in the visual arts. Growing up in a culturally engaged household, Lydia was exposed early to the currents of European modernism that were beginning to reach the Baltic region.
Her upbringing in turn-of-the-century Tallinn placed her at a crossroads of Russian, German, and emerging Estonian national culture, a milieu that would shape her later stylistic experimentation. The Mei sisters collectively are remembered as pioneering women in Estonian art history, at a time when women's access to formal art education and professional recognition was still limited across Europe.
Lydia's birth into this family set the stage for a life devoted to painting and design, eventually taking her from Estonia to Paris, where she, like many artists of her generation, sought exposure to the avant-garde movements reshaping modern art. Her early years in Tallinn remain foundational to understanding her later artistic trajectory and her place within a small circle of Estonian women artists who gained international visibility in the interwar period.
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