The book tells about the most admired generation of Latvian artists. The period of Classical Modernism in Latvian painting lasted in total about a decade and involved experiments in the synthesis of form by members of the Riga Group of Artists: Jēkabs Kazaks, Ģederts Eliass, Romans Suta, Oto Skulme, Uga Skulme, Jānis Liepiņš, Valdemārs Tone, Konrāds Ubāns, and Niklāvs Strunke. In the era of creativity following the First World War, replete with avant-garde approaches to form, these young artists were engaged in a learning process while simultaneously in search of contemporary expression, and through attaining professional maturity, they developed remarkable styles of their own.
The united generation of creative individuals of the early 20th century strove with all its spiritual might to free Latvian painting from a sense of provincial inadequacy, at the same time seeking to accustom the viewer to the idea that a work of art may present not only a realistically illusory reflection of the world, copying life, but also a schematised, synthetic language of form. It was due to the creative achievement of this generation that worthy collections of Latvian art were shown at foreign exhibitions in the period when Latvian painting was joining European cultural life – from Stockholm in 1927 to Paris and London in 1939.
Dace Lamberga
