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| Vilis Ozols Laima Slava Vilis Ozols belongs to the generation that, although born in the time of Latvia's independence, obtained its art education in the years of the Soviet regime, and was the first to declare itself as different, introducing the "harsh style" in figural painting. However, Vilis Ozols is known universally as a still-life painter, and there's nothing at all harsh in his works. Quite the contrary: there's peace, harmony, balance and stability, while his use of colour displays outstanding sensitivity, even tenderness. His works are unfailingly recognisable: small in format, with a clear structure, exquisite use of colour and familiar objects that emphasise basic geometric forms, arranged in a rhythmic sequence characteristic of Ozols. Usually serving as a vertical accent is a jug or coffee pot, with mainly round objects arranged on a tabletop turned towards the picture plane, covering up the angular forms: a plate (usually white), records (black with a white centre), a bowl, an apple, an egg, a billiard ball. It's homely, but not at all diffuse - clear, arranged, distinguishable, perceptible. Beautiful, but without the slightest trace of mannerism or stylisation, which might allow us to assign it to some pre-defined phenomenon, some particular departing age. One might even say that his painting was originally "harder", the corporeity of the objects denser, and that his great delicacy as a colourist has only now been fully released, the objects sometimes appearing to melt into the overall atmosphere of the painting, no longer so perfect, appearing softened instead. They have absorbed light until they themselves have begun to give light. There's no doubt that the still lifes of Vilis Ozols are valuable as objects for meditation. The more so, since they represent not the shell of things, but the essence of corporeity as people experience it. There is wisdom hidden in this apparent simplicity and unpretentiousness: not for nothing have the still lifes of Vilis Ozols attracted attention for forty years now, without changing in their basic features. So it is too at the major Still Life Exhibition at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall - in the artist's 75th birthday year. And nobody would call his work "old fashioned". These are simply "the still lifes of Ozols". They really do contain something akin to the meaning of his surname - "oak": a stout, strong tree in the Latvian landscape, unshakeable in the sturdiness of its expressive, easily recognised structure. Not for nothing do women artists remember him as a standard of manliness of his time (which he doesn't deny: "Well, I was a handsome lad..."), while colleagues mention Vilis Ozols' bear-like strength, which came in handy in various "mens' games" (which he also confirms in conversation, recounting how it was he who usually carried the invalid painter Leo Kokle (1924-1964) on his shoulders in the youthful bohemian night-time ramblings around the city). However, when questioned about himself, he talks slowly and little, turning instead to stories about his artist friends. | |
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Laima Slava: Have you ever thought about the meaning of fashion in art?
Vilis Ozols: No, I don't think about fashion! When I started, large-format works were fashionable! I don't like that kind of work. Boriss once said: if you set out to paint like Rembrandt, then that's regarded as terribly old-fashioned. But if you paint like a cave man, then that's modern! I know good painters who've wanted to be modern and contemporary: it hasn't worked! That's something you mustn't do! If you've been working all your life and reached something, then you mustn't break with it! In the time of Russian rule there were certain demands: so-called commissioned work. I've never submitted to those Soviet canons in painting. Neither have I ever belonged to the "harsh style". I really don't like it, the harsh style. I never did any of that. But I got ahead somehow. In my time at the Academy, I wanted to become a landscape painter, but not after that. I also came to enjoy figural painting. For my diploma work, I switched themes four or five times. In the end, I stayed with a rustic theme ("Midday Nap", 1958). The diploma work was immediately bought by Moscow. Later I produced a couple of commissioned works for them each year - Moscow paid better and didn't quibble so much. All you needed to do was to come up with a theme. A rustic theme? OK then, go ahead! But over here, you had to pass through three different committees, each of them still undecided as to whether they'd actually give you the commission... Boriss too was turned down three times. Here, they detested us. They didn't like the idea of young artists coming to the fore. In Moscow, my works were sent abroad and I myself was advanced to all sorts of positions, called out to participate in purchase commissions in other republics. But I disliked all of that so much that I shook myself free of it altogether. I've never really wanted to paint portraits. With a still life, you arrange it and you can do summer objects in the winter or the other way round. I've painted a great deal, and now I no longer need it in front of me: I can paint without it. With a portrait, you can't do that. I work slowly, and that's another reason I can't paint portraits. My conscience doesn't let me sit someone down and torment them. L.S.: When did you paint your first still life specially for an exhibition? V.O.: It was for the Second Young Artists' Exhibition. (Moscow bought that one too.) I began painting still lifes in my fourth year of studies. I was angry that it wasn't turning out the way I wished, knowing that it's possible to paint better. I'd heard that through still life one can learn to paint, and so after my summer plein air session I began to arrange and paint still lifes at home. And it opened my eyes. Something began to come of it. At the Academy too, when I had to paint nudes, it had given me a completely new sense of vision. In a word, I began to understand what painting is. And from that time I took a liking to still life. L.S.: What's important in still life painting? Is it the choice of objects? V.O.: That too, yes. And I make about three versions at the same time. Important are the objects that I've found and then the different versions. You have to achieve a good composition. It can be changed endlessly. And the one that works out best I paint for an exhibition. And then I go on, and a different one turns out even better. When the painting's been hung at the exhibition, I see what's not good in it, I come home and go on painting. L.S.: But what is it about an object - why do you choose it? V.O.: That's hard to say... There are objects that fit and others that don't fit at all. They just don't fit my kind of painting. Natural objects, such as a pumpkin or an apple, will always be useful. I've also painted quite a lot of eggs. There's always a plate. And the cups: brown, blue and white. These are lasting objects, made by people. But modern things, even if I like them, they don't fit the painting. Maybe they need to mature. L.S.: There's never one object on its own... V.O.: No, there hasn't been, but there could be... I can't say why there's never just one. L.S.: So there's a need to juxtapose something: but is it forms or colours? V.O.: Take the great French artists: Picasso and Braque... You can't really say whether it's an urban scene, a still life or a portrait. And it's very complicated. There's nothing of the Cubist in me, although people tend to think so. Cubism is a beautiful movement: I've nothing against it. I do like it. Unfortunately, I don't have it. Even if I do sometimes steal something - certain elements and forms. Cubism is form broken up, seen from many vantage points. I never do this: my objects are like objects. There may be a Cubist aspect in the way the forms of the objects are arranged in the composition. An angle, then a circle, then another angle. As many circles as there are angles. Just count them! It takes place instinctively, but if you were to count them, that's how it would be. L.S.: But surely, painting must give some kind of pleasure... V.O.: Yes, yes: there's bother and there's pleasure. It's a particular pleasure to discover something delightful: see, it's all well-composed, un so on... As regards colour... It's important to resolve it in terms of tone. Light against dark. That's important. If that's not there, then the work will not look right: it'll jump about, it won't hold together. L.S.: Are dimensions important? V.O.: Yes, but not all that important. I don't like it when objects exceed their natural size. I don't really like that, I don't know why. An apple is an apple. A small pumpkin. L.S.: Boriss also has animals in his still lifes. Pigs' snouts, bulls' heads... Whereas your still lifes really are still... V.O.: He enjoyed that: pig-slaughtering time. Countless times I've helped and held the bowl for dripping the blood. The squealing is so terrible you can't stand it. But that's what Boriss was painting, and it's the reason I could never do it. He was certainly better at that kind of thing. L.S.: Has your childhood influenced your choice of objects? V.O.: Maybe. I come from the country: I lived in the country for 20 years, near the town of Rūjiena. On a farm in Naukšēni Parish. The objects there were beautiful, come to think of it. Heavens, they really were! But all that was in the past. I had to flee and leave it all behind. There was a blot in my biography. L.S.: What was it with your biography? V.O.: The biography I submitted when I enrolled at the Academy was a bundle of lies. My father had been a political exile and my brother had served in the German army. And we ourselves counted as rich farmers. We had a big farm, with 20 cattle and nine horses. It was all completely inappropriate. But they never actually made much of a fuss: maybe they never actually found out. L.S.: Coming from a farming background, how does one develop an interest in art? V.O.: I'd decided already in childhood that I was going to be an artist, not a farmer. Because my maternal uncle was a kind of artist. He was called Mi˚elsons. Later he went off to Russia. There he was shot in 1937. In his last letter he wrote that this was the path he'd chosen, and he simply had to accept it. We sent him parcels with smoked meat and butter. The house was full of his charcoal drawings, hanging on the walls and in sketchbooks. There were some paintings too, but mostly drawings. Thank God, he'd left books on learning to draw, including a very good work from St Petersburg. And so I taught myself to draw. In Rūjiena, there was after all no artist who might give me advice. (There was actually one named Galzons, but I had no contact with him.) Another uncle of mine was a housepainter: he went round the manor-houses and painted amazing designs. He also painted our living room. My mother and grandmother were great weavers. They wove curtains, rugs and fabrics for furniture. They dyed their own thread and prepared everything at home, so, as a boy, I was put to the work of spooling. And so I decided I'd be an artist. But then the war came, and that was the end. I finished school in Naukšēni, and then, naturally, I went to school in Rūjiena. A friend of mine told me about the Rozentāls School of Art. And then there came the great deportations of March 1949 and I had to flee. I was already in my final year at secondary school. I ran off to the forest. I knew in advance they were coming for me. Our friends met us at the schoolhouse door when we were coming from the boarding house to warn us. They called out from our class another half-a-dozen pupils who were in danger, and we ran off. There was nothing nice about living in the forest. It was more than ten degrees below zero. There was not even any hay left in the hayshed. My feet got sore. Then I ran off to Riga. There was nothing for me at home. My relatives told me that my younger brother and my mother had fled too. Later she sent word to my relatives, since she guessed I might be with them, telling me that I should come home to take my exams, that they'd been to see the head of the secret police. I managed to get home, finished secondary school somehow and then went back to Riga. I went to the Rozentāls School. In autumn 1949, I started in the second grade. A year later, I jumped a grade and ended up in the same class as Indulis Zariņš and Bēms. And then it was off to the Academy. L.S.: Which artists did you admire back then? V.O.: Of the Latvians, I've always liked Tone. And the diploma work by Annuss. And Jānis Liepiņš. L.S.: And of your contemporaries? Kokle was already painting at that time... V.O.: Kokle was my best friend! His example was like a second academy to me. Bēms introduced me to him at about the time I finished the Rozentāls School. I went to visit him at Valguma Street, across the river. Sometimes I arranged a still life while he was engaged in writing. (He used to write long papers on art, which he would publish or present somewhere.) At that time, he was writing, not painting. I arranged a still life, he came up and quickly sketched it as well. Just a little sketch... But he painted it well. I learned a lot from him. He was a fine painter. He painted beautiful portraits. His brushwork was very developed. In those days, portraits had to conform to certain requirements. He smoothed the faces, and the real painting was done around the edges. Even so, it was good. We were friends. We behaved like real bohemians. Nowadays, they each take the credit for it, but in fact I was the one who took him on my shoulders when we had to run for it. The others were weaklings, they couldn't. | |
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