The sisters, who were born in Liepāja, Latvia, entered the Estonian art scene in the second half of the 1910s. The first exhibition all three participated in – as the only women – was the spring exhibition of the Pallas Art Society in 1919. Kristine Mei (1895–1969), the oldest of the sisters, studied to be a sculptor at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Society in Helsinki. However, she made a name for herself as a calligrapher and (similarly to her younger sister) as a book designer. Only a few examples of Kristine’s sculptural work have survived. Lydia (1896–1965), who was a year younger, studied architecture in St Petersburg, although she later became a watercolourist and an acknowledged master of this art. Natalie Mei (1900–1975), the youngest of the sisters, was in the first class to graduate from the Pallas Art School. She later designed costumes and decorations for productions in the Estonia Theatre, as well as many other Estonian theatres, served for a long time as a professor in the Textile and Costume Department of the State Art Institute of the Estonian SSR, and was also its director. However, her work in the fine arts was no less important. She demonstrated a remarkable socially and societally critical attitude for a woman artist, and also developed new ways of portraying women. As multifaceted modernist artists, the sisters chose more marginal and less respected techniques as means for their self-expression and depicted their era directly, openly and often with humour.