Latvijas trimdas mākslinieku iekļaušanās ASV mākslas vidē 20. gs. 50., 60. gados: sociālie un radošās dzīves konteksti
Latvian Exile Artists in the 1950s–60s US Art Scene: Contexts of Social and Creative Life

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the question of what it meant for Latvian exiled creative personalities to be included in the artistic and cultural processes of the US in the second half of the 20th century and how their forced absence from their homeland firstly affected the scope of their creative work and, secondly, how their creativity was influenced by issues of belonging and cultural identity. The article does this by examining artists’ creative paths and prospects for inclusion in the processes of their new home country in interaction with both the Latvian diaspora and the US art and cultural context in the 1950s and 1960s. The focus is on painters who were educated from the beginning of the 20th century until 1944 in art educational institutions of the Russian Empire, in Latvia, or in some cases in Europe, and as a result of the Second World War fled and came to the United States. The overall processes in exile show that national particularity and the separation of the self as an ethnic group dominated as a conceptual basis for constructing ideas about creative practice. The experience of art in the US was identified as alien to Latvian artists, but the idea of a national art school and creativity as a mission to preserve and maintain its values became essential. This was done by continuing the ideas of the first Latvian Free State, which ideologically combined the national-patriotic overlays of democracy and the authoritarian regime of Kārlis Ulmanis, but artistically maintained the myth of the Latvian Art Academy School and 1930s neo-realism.

• Details
• Contents