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 Bibliographic Record Antra Priede, Art Historian Artist Aleksandrs Dembo | |
| “Aleksandrs Dembo (French/Russian, 1931–1999)” – so we read in an entry in the comprehensive artnet.com portal, which usually does not lie. We couldn’t say that it is lying in this case either, but it is only partly true, as Aleksandrs Dembo is first and foremost a Latvian graphic artist, whose graphic art works and paintings of the 1960-90s form part of an exceptional and important page in the history of Latvian art. The reason for this half-truth is the complicated childhood and youth which the artist lived out in three countries. Aleksandrs’ father Boriss Henkins Dembo studied law and literature at the University of Latvia, but was expelled for revolutionary activities. He continued with his studies in Paris, where he met a young French woman, journalist and translator Anna. On 6 July 1931, Aleksandrs was born. The new family came to Riga, but Aleksandrs’ mother, who couldn’t get on with her parents-in-law, soon had to leave. Aleksandrs’ father, on the other hand, who was exiled from Latvia due to his underground activities, went to Moscow, where he worked at the editorial office of the newspaper За рубежом. Aleksandrs was left in the care of his grandparents. His first years of schooling were at the Riga 4th Primary School in Pārdaugava for a few years, but had to discontinue due to the war. During the war, having lost both of his grandparents, Aleksandrs was sent from one Soviet Union children’s home to the next. Whilst at a boarding school in Moscow, he lost all hope of finding his father, as Boriss Dembo had been arrested in 1938 to become a victim of Stalin’s repressions. After several publications of the young Aleksandrs’ poetry in the magazine Работница his father’s relatives were able to find him, and in 1945 Aleksandrs returned to Riga together with his fostermother Cecīlija Dembo. In 1947 he started attending the Decorative Painting Department of the Janis Rozentāls Riga Art Secondary School. Two years later he enrolled in the Art Academy of Latvia, from which he graduated in 1963 with the diploma work Jūras arāji (‘Ploughmen of the Sea’). During his studies Aleksandrs Dembo not only proved himself to be a creative and promising artist, but also a capable pedagogue. Although most of Dembo’s life was spent working ‘behind the Iron Curtain’, he was able to overcome this as if impenetrable wall and include in his graphic artworks things he had seen in France, the United States, Italy and other countries. Dembo is one of the first graphic artists who introduced colour into printmaking in the late 1960s. The legacy left behind by Dembo can be characterized as a game which he allowed himself to play, varying the use of diverse formal and technical means, daring to smudge the boundaries between the paintings and graphic works which he created in the 1990s. It is problematic to encompass all aspects that would characterize the entire range of the artist’s creative output, therefore I will touch on those themes which have been critical in the overall development of graphic art in Latvia, as well as those which have recurred throughout the decades of the artist’s creative work, leaving a place also for those aspects which allow us to catch a glimpse of the personality of Aleksandrs Dembo. | |
 Aleksandrs Dembo. The Banks of the Seine. Intaglio. 64x50cm. 1969. Courtesy of Graphic Arts Foundation of the Latvian Artists' Union | |
| In the 1960s, along with the depiction of fishermen which represents aspects of the severe style and has been left to that decade, a new motif emerged which was also carried over to the next decades and resulted in the large-format paintings of the late 1990s. This motif is Riga. It is possible that instead of our capital city it could well have been Paris, which already in 1969 had been depicted in colour etchings (the bank of the River Seine) after the artist returned home from visiting his mother. Another turning which could have made Paris into Dembo’s city was the invitation of Stanley William Hayter to stay in Paris and work in his famous Atelier 17. However, leaving aside all theories of probability, Dembo chose Riga. Initially he chose a realistic illustration of the city, but as time went on, he turned to the generalization of shapes, creating an image of Riga as a multistructural, urban whole (Daugava-81 from the series Aklātās vēstules draugam (‘Open Letters to a Friend’)), also allowing a few literary notes to resonate (Veltījums Rīgai (‘Dedication to Riga’, 1971), and including aspects of form which could be called contemporary at that time, as seen in the series Daugava–80. The theme of the universe in graphic art of the late 1960s and 70s went hand in hand with the importance of scientific discoveries of that time, the increasing popularity of science fiction in literature and art, as well as the political aspects which made these discoveries an important instrument of asserting Soviet power. Hence this theme was developed both taking into account the requirements of the state, and the artist’s own experimentation. In the late 1960s Aleksandrs Dembo, together with graphic artist Inārs Helmūts, spent 40 days in the ‘Space City’ of Senezh, Russia, which gave the artists additional artistic momentum to create their subsequent graphic works, trying to look into that realm which a mere mortal would never have a chance to visit. In these cycles – Anno 1918 (1968), Cilvēki un kosmoss (‘People and the Universe’, 1976) and Kosmoss un mēs (‘The Universe and Us’, 1978) – the most important quality is the colour, which on the etching plate steadily changes tonality, accentuating a few elements illustrating the contours of people, and city silhouettes over which astronauts are hovering in weightlessness. Another particular theme in the graphic works is music, or more precisely – jazz. Dembo himself said: “Music first of all ‘spoke to me’ in the 1960s and then kind of got left halfway. Lately I have turned to it again. These are my feelings and thoughts that have arisen from listening to music. I am fond of music generally, but especially jazz. I felt that I could express it through figural, rhythmical associations. Soloists, trumpet players – there were several small works in which I recorded my feelings.”(1) The outstanding feature of these graphic works is the virtuosity and the symbiosis of multilayered forms, leaving the use of colour in second place. The artist has never denied direct borrowing from the creative work of other artists, for example, references to the works of Picasso, Rousseau and Miro can be seen in the series Open Letters to a Friend, as well as in separate ‘letters’ about important events, in which the artist has turned to the motif of Guernica, relating it to wartime events in Vidzeme. Since Dembo himself had experienced the conditions of war, being flung from one place to another, one can sense the pain that permeates the images. There are pages of aquatint created in 1986 with the same title Letters from Vidzeme The ‘letters’ are dispatched to the past, as the addressee is Vidzeme 1941, and they are equally relevant for the time when they were created as well as the present, because the memories which give testimony to past events fade faster than the work of art reminding us of them. A motif of Henri Rousseau’s creative work has been used in the etching Atklāta vēstule Anrī Ruso (‘Open Letter to Henri Rousseau’, 1986). This work, too, continues with the theme of war: to illustrate it, Dembo uses a fragment of the 1894 Rousseau painting War. In the graphic works Robotiņu satikšanās (‘The Meeting of Little Robots’) and Robotiņu paukotāji (‘The Little Robot Fencers’) one can see a periphrasis of Joan Miro’s work. In the last decade of his life, the artist turned to painting. But even in this medium the artist did not lose his affinity with graphic art – he used the techniques of intaglio and letterpress extensively, combining them and then assembling the work as a collage. In an interview Aleksandrs Dembo said: “I feel like a painter, as if I had been painting all the time, as if I had always done it.”(2) | |
 Aleksandrs Dembo. Aggression. Intaglio. 65x50cm. 1987. Courtesy of Graphic Arts Foundation of the Latvian Artists' Union | |
| In the 1990s, the artist in his works followed the path of development which had been trodden before by the avant-garde painters of the 20th century, from primitivism and ancient cultural heritage to abstractionism. Already on his first trips to America, Dembo turned his attention to the Native American masks seen in museums, his next influence was Picasso again, and then he turned to Miro, Klee, Malevich and Pollock. The reason the artist was so attracted to Peru and the examples of ancient African art was their uniqueness and his conclusion that the colour sense of the Indians is akin to the colourfulness found in Latvian folk patterns. Lauskas (‘Shards’) were works which were created as a matter of chance: when carrying a load of roof shingles on the car roof, the cords unravelled and the shingles fell to the ground, breaking into uneven pieces. Dembo painted on these irregularly-shaped surfaces. Later he tried several ways of breaking roof shingles to continue with these types of works. As a result he had a broad conceptual basis for the Shards series. It was the artist’s wish to spite the unalterable flow of time, observing how civilizations and the cultures that form them rise and fall, disappearing and leaving as evidence of their existence nothing more than difficult to find and decipher shards. Dembo was attracted to the work of Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) in terms of the way canvas space is organized and how an action painting practitioner releases himself for the one task – colour or rhythm. On the other hand, Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) interested him with the organization of canvas space in a square field. Dembo did not transfer features of Malevich’s paintings directly, but used his principles of canvas organization, creating the composition from certain details and shapes, which create certain colour rhythms. The paintings in acrylic Pusīte I and Pusīte II (‘Half 1’ and ‘Half 2’, early 1990s) are compositions of abstract shapes, where the black background is rendered almost invisible by using dabs of paint of various thicknesses, textures, colours and rhythms. In the second half of the1990s the compositional principles of the works mentioned above were developed by the addition of graphics, as seen in Kvadrāta iekustināšana (‘The Square in Motion’, 1997). The surface of the work is made up of small pieces of printed-on fabric. The resulting mosaic is supplemented with details from photographs, and the work is finished with dabs of acrylic paint. Possibly these works can be regarded as the culmination of the artist’s creative life, as they combine all the techniques Dembo worked in, as well as the motifs he had worked with throughout the decades. Looking at the work from today’s perspective, one is not surprised by the merging of several art media or removing the boundaries altogether. But on the Latvian art scene Aleksandrs Dembo was one of the first artists to use this approach. An invaluable continuation of this experimentation has been the pedagogical work of the artist, because by working in this field he instilled in his students the spark not to fear to dare, and to break boundaries. Ten years ago, eight galleries almost simultaneously opened exhibitions of works by Dembo’ s students, offering eggnog and éclairs at the openings. It was to commemorate the birthday of the outstanding educator, a tradition since the early 1990s. In 2000 the master was no longer with his students, but he was present in their works of art. The magic of art was celebrated, the opportunity to realise the unique way of how each could introduce to the others their games with an idea. These eight exhibitions united components which were characteristic of Dembo, both as an artist and a pedagogue. The gallery of the Latvian Artists’ Union held an exhibition Runātājs (‘Speaker’) in which Kristīne Drengere, Ilze Breidaka and Iluta Rode took part. Dembo’s passion for screen printing, which was passed on to his students, was reflected in the gallery Bastejs exhibition Pasieris (‘Registration’), in which Ilze Krūmiņa, Kirils Šmeļkovs, Varis Rudzītis, Valda Podkalne, Dmitrijs Lūkins, Ojārs Pētersons, Andris Breže, Ilona Spila, Indra Puķe, Aivars Plotka, Gunta Plotka, Aivars Rušmanis, Ansis Drāznieks, Jānis Murovskis, Ineta Berkmane, Sarmīte Māliņa un Ivars Mailītis took part. The gallery Čiris presented an exhibition which showed the artist’s enthusiasm for the image of the cat. This exhibition was called Kaķis. Zelta laiki (‘The Cat. The Golden Age’) and featured works by Ginta Bērziņa, Zigmunds Katkovskis, Mārtiņš Vilkārsis, Elīza Vanadziņa and Aelita Jurjāne; bearing witness to the Dembo’s ideas about movement in a work of art, Gita Okonova and Gatis Buravcovs created an exhibition Inerces (‘Momentum’) in the gallery Māksla XO. The House of Design featured an exhibition of Ārija Lipska and Gatis Buravcovs Mantas un fantas (‘Things and Trinkets’), and the gallery of Ivonna Veiherte presented an exhibition Kāds salika visu pa plauktiņiem (‘Someone put everything neatly in the shelves’) in which Maruta Raude and Indra Sproģe bore testimony to the ability of the pedagogue to help students to order their thoughts “in the right direction”. Sproģe remembers: “He was able to find the creative potential in everyone and could inspire us, strike up the creative fire, he made us feel the need to realize our creativity. He taught us to see the miracle in an accident, to discern what could be used and make it into a personal technique. He liked to find artists that would inspire each individual student.” The artist Agnese Bule, for her part, adds other qualities to be highlighted in Dembo’s pedagogical work: punctuality and inner discipline, as well as unfailing optimism. A significant legacy of Aleksandrs Dembo’s pedagogical work is the establishment of the Department of Visual Communication at the Art Academy of Latvia. In 1987 he set up and led the graphic design master workshop, and on its foundations the Department of Graphic Design3 was inaugurated in 1992. Dembo’s activities and the ability to spot the key that would unlock the creative development in each student allowed this department to become the standard-bearer of his understanding of what it is to create art in general. This includes not shutting off oneself from the presence of the new media, but integrating new trends of Western art into the local art environment, experimentation and playing out all available cards to create something convincing and full-blooded, because everything is done for the sake of art, one step ahead of its time. (1) Muižniece, Rūta. Artist in a Moment of Thought. Dzimtenes Balss, 1980, No. 30. (2) Barčevska, Diāna. I Do Exactly What I Want. Literatūra. Māksla. Mēs, 1998, Oct 29 – Nov 5. (3) The Graphic Design Department of the Design Faculty was renamed Visual Communication Department on 16 July, 1999. /Translator into English: Vita Limanoviča/ | |
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