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| ...I’LL BE A LATVIAN. Edvards Grūbe Laima Slava | |
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At the present day, discussion of national values may seem old fashioned. But there's no denying that they do exist. Not so long ago they were waved on the banner of free thinkers as proof of the need for national independence and as an assertion of that independence. And they are still cited: in conflicts at the world's hotspots, in claims and counter-claims and equally in describing elevated spiritual values and humanity's real treasures. It turns out that they are not unchanging, but the feelings that they enliven always remain in demand: natural self-esteem and a sense of belonging to some unique whole, which gives you a name, distinguishes you from the unidentified and brings you out of the chaos of existence. So long as mention is made of the Latvians as a people, so long too there will be mention of the identifying features of this people, which have developed over the centuries and have been formulated at moments of necessity, of which the most indisputable has turned out to be folksong. But equally indisputable is the addition, in the 20th century, of painting as the quintessence of contemporary expression of the Latvian mentality.
Portraying the painter Edvards Grūbe in this issue of the journal seemed an obvious choice. If there is any painter at this time, in whose works absolutely concretely, and at the same time with the truth and force of highest-calibre art, one can find ever new reminders of the very basis of the people, the cultural tradition and its integration into everyday consciousness - with clearly defined basic symbols of existence such as Mother and Bread, or nature with its autumn bounty, as well as earth tones emphasised in bright colour contrasts, which we tend to regard as Latvian, then the name Edvards Grūbe will definitely be mentioned first. His paintings, forceful in the attitude to life that they display, always alive with expressive plasticity, professionally outstanding and saturated in psychophysical terms, are like a permanent reminder of major subterranean currents from which one draws strength. It is defined simply - as a link with the natural surroundings of one's country. Colour and colour alone is the source and aim of Grūbe's attention and interest. It is found everywhere and can say all things. But in order to achieve this, a long road has been travelled in studying the medium, with a series of encounters - including the meeting with the Latvian farmstead and the tragic turn of its fate in the second half of the 20th century. Quite appropriately, together with his wife Inta Celmiņa, he featured in a recent film "Studio in the Countryside" (director: Olafs Okonovs, 2002), even in their personal, everyday activity visually embodying a link between the rhythm of country life and the laying of paint on canvas. Grūbe is a painter of conflicts, a talent oriented towards drama, and there is no cloying play with light and colour relationships, the substance of which is provided by the arrangement of things in space. This is precisely why we do not tire of his works. They can be relived brushstroke by brushstroke each time, since the truth of the impulse, the charge of energy at the time of painting has made them unique. They are also endowed with purely aesthetic beauty - and precisely as the resolution of a conflict, rather a catharsis than a self-sufficient idyll. Oh, one can write and write about the feelings that the viewer can "extract" from the paintings of Grūbe. Because these are the feelings of our life. Sometimes pushed back into the subconscious, retrieved by a touch of the brush and allowed to be felt, while others reflect a willed muffling of everyday excitement and nervousness, in a search for harmony. The very basis of life - what is it? The artist has been asking himself this question all his life, and no doubt every one of us has at some point thought about this question. We talked in a studio in Riga. When I met the two artists at the outstanding exhibition marking the return of Mark Rothko at the State Museum of Art, they said something like: how wonderful it is to have an exhibition where you understand everything - what, how and why is happening in the painting! And I in turn must ask how Edvards Grūbe developed his understanding of painting. Edvards Grūbe: I have to start with my education. I was taught during the time of Stalin and after Stalin. Under professors appropriate to the Stalin era. Of course, I knew this was not enough for me, that this naturalism is utterly inappropriate for me, and so in everything I sought out that which I wanted to work with, which would be appropriate to me. I also sought an approach to colour. The conditions were very harsh in those days. There were one or two good painters, but for the most part the works were mediocre at best. The painting of the 50s and 60s that was accepted for exhibitions was entirely misguided. The staff at the Academy of Art who taught composition weren't Latvian. In the first year, I was taught by Huan Emanuel Lopez. He'd been brought over from Spain in 1937, had grown up in Moscow and had come to work in Riga. His experience was entirely that of the Russian peredvizhniki. And that was what he taught. One had to seek elsewhere. Such fundamentals of painting were not in accord with what I wished to understand. The composition and the choice of subject matter was something one had to find for oneself. Professor Ubāns taught painting technology, since he was forbidden to teach painting. Like other accomplished artists who took up work again at the academy when I was already in my second or third year, he was intimidated, and he was not allowed to talk about formal means of expression, since this was condemned by the state. But without really learning about formal approaches you can't master the profession. I'd already reached the stage where I needed this. When I was working on my diploma work, in the spring of 1961, I had on the table in my workshop the monograph by Tone (which I'd bought in a second-hand bookshop). The tutor of my diploma work, professor Edvards Kalniņš, whom I held in high regard, came in, picked up the book and said: "Now let's put that aside. You, who are younger than me, cannot understand that." Since one was not permitted to learn from or be influenced by them. That we had to do surreptitiously. But I understood that I like it, that it is good and that I too wish to develop in that direction. I'd been working in all different ways - I'd drawn the way we had to, naturalistically, and I'd understood that this was not for me. That was not accidental - thus far I had progressed. In my youth, I set up a programme for myself, and considered how I should work and develop. I also understood that one has to start with the simple and move on to complicated things - I taught myself. And then I was really lucky to take up work at the School of Applied Art, where I really came to life. In teaching others, I sorted out for myself that which I still rely on. What was it that allowed you to come to life? E.G.: It was the professional approach. In applied art too, it wasn't so simple. Imants Žūriņš took up work at the Applied Art School in 1960, and that same year, before I'd graduated from the academy, I started working as a teacher. Before this, the school had only the requirements sent from Moscow, from the Party Central Committee, and there was not a hint of any feeling of Latvianness. Why did the feeling of Latvianness seem important? E.G.: Because I saw that the official approach was not art. In talking to Imants Žūriņš about Latvian folk art, I began to understand the feeling characteristic of the Latvian people. But already in the 1930s there was a state-defined need for a national art, with all the salon-style consequences that this brought, and in the 50s that which is called the national style was still retained and even flourished, often particularly in the form of kitsch. Declarative ethnographic style etc. Did this experience not intimidate you? E.G.: This experience was unacceptable to me. I was interested in 1920s Tone, Ubāns, Grosvalds, Kazaks and Suta. And I connected this with experience of Latvian folk art. I mean the ancient, centuries-old textiles. This was more in my line, here especially you could find colour. I studied the sense of colour. I developed an interest, I visited museum collections and collected every little rag, scraps and whole blankets. From all sorts of places, wherever I came across anything of the sort. There were people who brought me these things too. They might also be gnawed, rotten fragments, so long as the colours were discernible. But why did it seem that there is more art in that which is Latvian? I simply don't understand how one finds that which is needed precisely there. How one chooses the place to find it? Inta Celmiņa: (Having remained silent for a long time, can no longer keep it in) When there is nothing - and you were not even allowed to have books from abroad - you're forced to seek out the foundations. And the foundations are right here - the earth under your feet. You ask, what is there to study in a blanket. The three colours placed together there - that's enough in itself! And Ûūriņš seems to have thought of this first and made children copy the three tones from the mittens. And in our work, we too understood, "Oh, those three tones, they really go together!" That happens accidentally. When you've got nothing, you find the foundations. If you're surrounded by a great miscellany, you're more likely to lose your way. E.G.: There was a need. I.C.: They were prison conditions. E.G.: It really was like that. But when I first noticed Grūbe's works at exhibitions, they attracted me not by those three tones, but by the unusual, surreal mood? E.G.: About ten years had already passed by then. In my youth, as now, I've tried to paint at all times and a great deal, as much as possible. Because I enjoy it. Up to the 70s, I'd already done a lot of work and had already covered some ground. Already in my early youth, in my student years, I was thinking about what I should paint. Important for me was the nerve of the age. A feeling for the age. I've always thought about that. In accordance with the possibilities of easel painting, of course. In terms of the approach to painting, in, say, the selection of objects, of phenomena. In figural painting too. Early on, I was interested in the phenomenon of the Latvian riflemen. Since the way I would now regard it, the very beginning, the formation of the Latvian Rifle Battalions - that was after all a world-scale phenomenon. They held the front in Latvia for quite a long time - up to 1917. I had an interest in still life. Perhaps not the depiction of objects, but such a theme as bread. In a way that could correspond to the Latvian feeling for it. I understood early on that I don't wish to be verbose in my painting. I sought out themes and means of expression, and thanks to my way of painting, I could manage to get the themes through to the exhibition. Since I painted no eyes or buttonholes, I didn't need to paint red stars on the foreheads of the riflemen either. It all goes together. I was also interested in all opportunities to see what is not shown officially. I saw the works of Grosvalds long before they were shown officially. I became acquainted with Mrs Grīnberga, the museum curator, I could spend time in the collections and see all of it. But where was the nerve of the age captured? E.G.: As a young man, I read a lot - everything I could get, and if you wanted to get it, you could. I went to the markets where you could buy old books. Reading these, I could sense what was happening at the present day. These were my conclusions. At least in the form of a contrast. After all, life in Soviet times was quite interesting - with all the things you were not allowed. I'd covered a good deal of ground in my thinking, and this made me go even further. In the late 60s a translation found its way into the Applied Arts School, the so-called "Confession" of Picasso. In it he describes all his activity, what he really liked, and why he had changed several times in his life. It's quite interesting: we have Boriss Bērziņš, regarded as a truly Latvian artist. His mother is Russian, and his painting is full of reminiscences of world art. And painter Grūbe, who has thought so hard about really Latvian painting, is the son of an Estonian mother! E.G.: It's precisely because I thought about this matter! On getting my first passport, I had to choose my nationality. I could take one or the other. But I decided that since I'd been born and grown up in Latvia, I'd be a Latvian! And then I tried to absorb, understand and work with that which is Latvian. My teacher, the Spaniard, he too was more Russian than all the Russians! Picasso, whom we so admire, has said that world fame can only be obtained by an artist who is worthy in his own country. He who has absorbed all that is national, can also become necessary to the whole world. Without this it all seems unreal to me, plucked from the air, if it's not underlain by something organic, vital. Inta Celmiņa: "Your own country" can be like a country, like a land, but it can equally be yourself. Finding yourself, that comes from the soles of your feet. In youth, you dig and toil, seeking what it's all based on. When you reach that land of your own that is under your feet (and folk art is the simplest, most accessible and best way to get there), then, whether it's you or the country - it's all one and the same. It's simply the earth under your feet. So this means that identity is determined more by the place where you are, rather than your roots or your blood, or the threads that take you to different branches of culture... E.G.: Of course, in the first place there was that which is here on the spot. In Soviet times, after all, there was little chance of getting abroad. In 1969 I had the chance to visit Italy. What I saw there - original works by Giotto, Cimabue‑- I added to what I had already begun. All this was useful to me, in painting the riflemen, for understanding themes, for the colour. It influenced me. But the foundation was here. A knowledge of history etc. But has there never been any reflection of Estonian culture? E.G.: Perhaps only in my character. I quickly came to perceive that painting is not the strongest of the art forms among the Estonians. They're more into graphic art, and they're strong in applied art. Grūbe is in truth a child of the city. E.G.: Yes, but in my childhood I had to spend several years in the countryside, in very harsh conditions. I went to school in the country, at Ragana, and walked seven kilometres there and back during the war, and I worked as a cowherd for other people, rather than simply herding the cattle of my relatives. I was properly hired for the season. I had this experience already in my childhood. Did this determine your wish to find a possibility of living and working on a farm in the summer? E.G.: Well, that pleasant farm came later, my wife and I did that together. But it's clear that the nature of Latvia, just like Latvian art and all of culture is something that I've always been trying to examine and get a sense of. What has this contributed in terms of your relationship with colour? E.G.: That was already a different period, when I'd done a considerable amount of painting. We bought the farm in 1977. After that, development proceeded more consciously and rapidly. All that we saw around us there, everything we collected, all of this helped strengthen this conviction. We've often said what nitwits we'd be, if we didn't have this farm of ours. You have to do everything that this place needs so that what is still standing doesn't collapse. And all the harshness, the directness of country life, and that which surrounds you, all of this also influences painting. It's possible to paint quite schematically, but the feeling for nature that you gain out there in the setting is invaluable. The fact that you can paint three colour fields, but if they've come about from what you see around you, then they're not contrived. They have a liveliness. And if we compare with Rothko... E.G.: It comes to the same thing. If the times had been such that development in art would have continued naturally here from the 30s up to all that took place in the world, would it be the case that Abstract Expressionism would have become the main direction in which to work? Or are the themes with which you work equally important - in figural works too? E.G.: I've always been interested in how I paint. But it has never taken place without that which I paint. I've always striven to first take that which is most important, to discard what can be discarded and in this way to achieve a powerful laconic impression. | |
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