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| BIRUTA DELLE Daiga Rudzāte BIRUTA DELLE Born in 1944. Studied at the Latvian Academy of Art from 1964 until 1967. Exhibiting since 1967. | |
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Nature and the teacher
Biruta Delle's first teacher was Auseklis Baušķenieks. But Ansis Stunda is the one she calls her Teacher. It seems he is the only one who might be mentioned as a guiding force, a source of influence and inspiration. Because it's impossible to name anyone else. At the academy, where she terminated her studies, nobody ever became an authority for Delle. We might mention Cézanne, whom Biruta Delle herself mentions in several interviews. "I was given a big book on Cézanne. I leafed through it and began to study it. I traced each little tone eagerly with my finger. I went to "read" Cézanne every free moment. (..) Cézanne himself is held to have said he had revealed geometric forms in nature by means of colour. I discovered that he had misunderstood himself. That in reality he had found "non-representational" painting, which became my own personal colour theory." (This quotation and those that follow are from the artist's own text "My Life".) "You have to paint as fast as if this were your final hour, and as carefully as if you had the whole of eternity before you." Later, she was to remember these words of her teacher's. He was the one who instilled in Delle the adoration of nature, which later became the starting point for her art. The placid face of Riga's left-bank suburb of Pārdaugava, nestling among the horse-chestnuts, with its yards, houses, roofs and trees, as well as sunlit coastal scenes. Delle is capable of immersing herself so deeply in nature, that she passes on to the viewer what are virtually her own physical sensations of that moment, allowing one to sense the heat of the sun or the sea wind. In formal terms, she has chosen the most difficult approaches to this task, for example, painting a landscape filled with light, when the brightness renders everything seemingly colourless, but this in turn permits her to "toss" into the works those characteristic Delle shadows. Light is immensely important in Delle's art - it is the prevailing element. "Strangely enough, the scene also contains a hidden wonder. It seems this is because the superficially simple, even coarse palette is imbued with a kind of inner fineness, giving a mysteriously tender mood. Seeing these landscapes by Biruta Delle, I sense the thrill of colour itself as a wonder." (Herberts Dubins) Familiarity with the characteristic Delle scenes of the Torņkalns district was apparently the reason for the surprise at her paintings of new multi-storey blocks of flats at the 2002 Autumn Exhibition award-winners' showing at the Riga Gallery. The revelation of urban beauty, which appeared so self-explanatory, in the work of Juris Baklāns, for example, seemed something entirely untested and foreign to Delle's essence. Nevertheless, her ability to see and catch the moment was just as convincing as in her previous work in the seemingly predictable genre of suburban scenes. It transpires from what Delle herself has written that only in 1974 did she first paint works "without nature", after sketches. Henceforth, these matchbox-size sketches would come to hold a very significant place in her work. In 1979, Delle painted a "Self-Portrait with Pupils", where the ascetic detachment and the slightly upturned faces of the subjects, with eyes closed - as if they were all striving to reach somewhere - creates a mood pervaded with a sense of mission. The studio she created became renowned throughout Riga, and Delle strove to instil in her pupils, known to others as "Dellists", referred to by the painter herself as the "Submarine", those same fundamental values that Ansis Stunda had once caused to germinate in her. "A drawing teacher from Mazirbe Special School, Andris Grīnbergs, brings me two 16-year-old boys. They have an excellent sense of colour. We decide to work with them, but Grīnbergs takes no further interest. What should I do? Where were they to live? So we took them in. Across the street, we obtained the mansard room of a youth club. An official commission came and approved my teaching abilities. Another four youths came, from Riga. Very cramped now, but happy, I teach them what Stunda taught me. In spring, there was a wonderful exhibition of their works." With time, the Dellists dispersed, without becoming professionals, but "they are all now knowledgeable and capable" - says their teacher in an interview. "They have left me, or else they think I have left them. I think they remember the main thing I taught them: it's not important to learn to paint, but rather to live as a painter. It means giving up many things, but such renunciation does not always bring the sought-after results." The painter had the idea of turning Arkādija Park into a place for young artists to paint from nature. An idea that was never realised, for various reasons. Who was odd in the olive grove... In 1974, Biruta Delle joined the Artists' Union. "Not all the ideas realised by Biruta Delle have enjoyed unanimous appraisal from artists and society, and perhaps for this reason her work, right from her years at the academy, has always been received very seriously, and it seems that the artist has travelled down many long paths of self-cognisance, each of these being professional and necessary. Such introspection, a seeking and finding of her own truth, has been logical, however well those same works, so clearly conceived and nurtured, stand out against the best of backgrounds, works that were necessary not only to the artist, but to the whole of society. Thus, right from her youth, Biruta Delle took to her hard and weary path in art in solemn earnestness; Biruta Delle is a pronounced artistic personality, and her place is among the members of the Artists' Union." This is what painter Džemma Skulme wrote in her recommendation for Delle's acceptance into the Artists' Union. Although Biruta Delle is nowadays a lonely, solitary bird, the base from which the painter Biruta Delle emerged is full of strong bohemian intellectualism. "Once I went into a café on Vaļņu iela. Oh my goodness! The café was called Kaza (‘The Goat'). There, at the far tables the French Group are sitting. I want to flee, but I'm stopped by another group near the window, who invite me to sit down. (..) Thus, I slid into Kaza as into my own home." Her friends included Māra Ķimele and Maija Silmale. "She was virtually bursting with profound intelligence, from which the young poets and artists subsisted in those days. She was the centre for us all." (from "My Life"). At this time, the portraits of Imants Kalniņš and Maija Silmale were created. This genre too has become transformed in Delle's art, like the rest of her work. The solo exhibition this winter at the Artists' Union Gallery was introduced by a very natural self-portrait with a child, and the logical course of the exhibition ended with portraits of gliding beings that had spun into strange wheels, next to which were the names of real people. Shown at an exhibition of works by young artists in 1977 was a painting now already a classic of Latvian art history "Who was Odd in the Olive Grove...". Those who experienced its first showing say it was like an electric shock. Slender, outstretched figures with arms reaching out to the sky, in a plane saturated with desert colours, told of human longing and desperation. It seems this is the first work marking the way to the surreal figural world of Delle, nowadays so well known, where distortion is essential to help her pass on her message. And nevertheless, no matter how we might wish to denote the "olive grove" as a key work, the painter herself describes as the painting of her life a work entitled "Gordian Knot" - a large format composition with many figures, which burned along with her country house Ineši. In order to create it, a stage was apparently built on a hill, with about 20 manikins. In the 80s and 90s the subject matter of Delle's painting became ever more intimate and sorrowful. She opened up the world of her essential being and her emotions with the help of touchingly odd figures. One wants to pity them, but at the same time there is fear, since, though they are placed in the centre of the composition, they nevertheless look past the viewer, instilling tension and forcing confrontation with the solitude of existence. The scarified picture plane renders the world presented here amazingly live and full of breath. Tractates of the heart, requiring the precision of a cardiologist (Gundega Repše) "One day in May, when a great thunderstorm began, I ran out under the eves of the shed and screamed inwardly, crying and imploring God with all my heart to help open the way to something great. After a few days of fever, the revelation came that I would be an artist. I was 13 years old, and I had never even seen a painting." ("My Life") Such a text might seem too exalted, had it not been written by Biruta Delle, who belongs to that rare breed obsessed with art to the extent that everything else (not only mercantile concerns) loses its meaning. "An exhibition opened at the Jāņa Sēta Gallery the day before yesterday, where each painting is like a brief death. I have never heard Biruta Delle talking about painting as an art form: she has always described it in terms of an essential activity. And painting, as a contrast to living, was for her something akin to dying, though not as self-destruction, but as self-realisation, opening the way to a world where the dominant element is light." (Juris Boiko, "Par izstādēm", Diena, April 1991) And in the early 90s, she told me in an interview: "All I had to do was to bring up children. But that I didn't do. And, look, they grew up themselves. (..) In order to paint from morning till night, you have to relinquish all else." Her art is difficult to analyse in the manner professionals are accustomed to, since there is the mystical feeling that the works don't permit it - as if these paintings were encapsulated, protecting them from X-ray scanning, with the effect of a kind of nuclear charge, the radiation from which is difficult to avoid without falling ill. Possibly, succumbing to loneliness, of which there is an immensity. "Loneliness is like a knife blade. You can fall one way or another, but there will be a fall. You can lose your mind. But when painting, the day passes unnoticeably: you start, and lo, it's evening already." Art is jealous "I started painting and writing at the same time. But my Teacher said that art is a woman - it is jealous. When I showed him what I'd written, he replied, "Very good. But now throw it away." You have to make a choice." That's what the artist told me in 1990. On 20 January 1995, the paper Nakts published Biruta Delle's story "The Dogs", an extract from which might be perceived as a verbal illustration of her paintings. "Oh, passer-by of my story! Stop here and just take a look: doesn't it seem that the hiding-place of the most touching happiness might be revealed here? Here you'll have a landscape, here you'll have art, and here you'll have a person. Standing right at the top of the hill, and his long hair and beard wavy like a bread crust, no, like seaweed. You see his coarse garments rippling, receding from the flesh, and then desperately clinging to it. You can see his movements frozen in their restless rhythm! I go and hide behind a bush, in order to get a closer look at the face. Now I see it: his eyes show elated peace, since he is painting a landscape on a great canvas and is locked into close contact with nature lying before him. But I have such regard for you, dear reader, that I invite you to enter nature through the painting. Let us pass through the green grass, which, along with the flock of sheep, will seem sickly to you for a short time, but such vexation is only a trick of painting." | |
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