Edvards Grūbe
Paintings 1963 – 2010

05.02. – 14.03.2010

The solo exhibition is a celebration for the artist marking the end of an almost 50 year period of work and allowing him to analyse himself. The paintings on show date from 1963 to the present day – a broad retrospective with many new works.

None of the values found by Grūbe in his youth have been lost; they may have become deeper and heavier. Nothing much has changed in the themes and execution of his works, only his mastery and love for the infinite possibilities of colour have grown greater. Although he deals again and again with his favourite themes – mother, shards, windows, still lifes, dolls – now it is a different time, a different maturity and a different sense of colour. Just as in the figural compositions, in still lifes too the artist praises the things that are dear to him. Bread, clay pots, only Latvian work tools, chairs – these are not just beautiful objects, they also reflect his perception of the world. In his works we can sense the seriousness and love with which Edvards Grūbe sees them. Colour has been opened up free and bright. The calm that was so characteristic of his early work has gone.

These days there is a constant transformation of nature in Grube’s works. Choosing laconic forms and rejecting all the superfluous and at times even the objective form, he creates works of art that are identical to nature in their mood yet are not copies of it. The manner of painting that was initially based on a realistic depiction of nature now contains the scents and colours of reality. These are tones that accord precisely with the object or mood; moreover, they are tones that describe the states of a phenomenon and the soul. If when starting out on a painting Grūbe sometimes paints his favourite things in a quite realistic way, then at the end they retain only the most characteristic of their colour and sometimes the tension of the chiaroscuro, but not always their form. Objects may completely lose their objectivity and transform into rhythms of light and dark, into a game between colour fields.

Edvards Grūbe says: “The main thing is to find an occupation in which you want to delve deeper and deeper, to master it fully to the level of virtuosity. That is a lifetime’s ambition. For me it is painting.”

Inta Celmiņa

Edvards Grūbe was born in Riga on 3 November 1935. He attended the Janis Rozentāls Riga Secondary School of Art finishing in 1955 and graduated from the Latvian Academy of Art in 1961. He first exhibited in 1961 and only two years later became a member of the Latvian Artists’ Union. Grūbe spent much of his life teaching at the Riga School of Applied Art, Latvian Academy of Art and at the International College of Practical Psychology. Since 1975 the artist has been awarded prizes at exhibitions in Vilnius, Riga and Moscow. In 2008 he received the Order of the Three Stars. His works are in the collections of the Arsenāls art museum in Riga, the Artists’Union, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Lithuanian Museum of Art in Vilnius, the Ludwig Museum of Modern Art in Köln as well as in private collections in Latvia and abroad.

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To coincide with the opening of the exhibition, publishers “Neputns” are publishing the monograph album “Edvards Grūbe” in Latvian and English. The album has been compiled by Laima Slava who is also the author of the text together with painter Inta Celmiņa. The scientific catalogue and list of exhibitions has been compiled by art scholar Ilze Puniņa. The book was designed by Zane Ernštreite.

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During the EDVARDS GRŪBE. PAINTINGS 1963 – 2010 exhibition viewers will be able to watch the documentary film “Studio in the Country” (2002) about the work of Edvards Grūbe and Inta Celmiņa. Film script – Laima Slava, director – Olafs Okonovs, camera – Uldis Jancis, composer – Andris Dzenītis. In 2004 “Studio in the Country” was awarded the Mura d’Oro, the main prize at the Bergamo (Italy) film festival dedicated to art.

Exhibition curator Dace Lamberga