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| KURTS FRIDRIHSONS Gundega Repše | |
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The story of the "French Group" needs retelling from time to time, so it seems. A good pretext for this is the exhibition created by the French Cultural Centre in Riga and the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia: "The French Group and the artist Kurts Fridrihsons". For the sake of clarity, I should add that Kurts Fridrihsons is presented not as he was at the triumphal moment of his artistic biography or in some phase of completeness and fullest expression, but as a prisoner in the camp, showing some of the works he sketched and drew in the Gulag, which for him were not drawings or artistic facts, but instead meant spiritual self-therapy, and also served as a diary, a way of sending a message home.
We should begin by explaining that the term "French Group" is actually a misnomer and should always be placed in inverted commas. There was no organised group in the political sense. This was the name given by the secret police to a friendly, quite extensive circle of like-minded individuals with a stable core, brought together in the late 1940s by a love of France and French culture. Nevertheless, it was a much wider cultural spectrum that featured in their famous Monday meetings. Kurts Fridrihsons provided the inspiration for this circle and was the initiator. The way they met - open house at a private apartment - was a direct and literal reminder of the famous French salons. Each of them was allowed to bring along an acquaintance (and that's how they came to be betrayed). Presentations, and always a lecture or reading on some cultural figure, along with discussion, debate and socialising. Albert Camus (whose philosophy seems to have captivated all or virtually all of them, and was to become a lifelong passion for some, including Fridrihsons), Ghandi, Michelangelo, Vrubel, Martin du Gard, Sartre, Saint Exupery, Tolstoy and countless others. But most dangerous for the Iron Curtain and for the police turned out to be Andre Gide, whom Fridrihsons had met in France during the time of Latvia's independence, and his work "Return from the USSR", which was illegal in occupied Latvia. The criticism of the regime in power in the USSR expressed in this work was the decisive factor. Of course, it was a different France and a different kind of French culture than that which we are accustomed to perceive at the beginning of the 21st century. Of course, these people (Maija Silmale, Elza Stērste, Ieva Lase, Mirdza Ersa, Skaidrīte Sirsone, Milda Grīnfelde, Alfrēds Sausnis, Eleonora Sausne, Arnolds Stubaus, Irīna Stubaua, Gustavs Bērziņš, Miervaldis Ozoliņš and others, as well as those who only dropped in now and again - Lilita Bērziņa, Mirdza Ķempe, Mirdza Bendrupe and Voldemārs Sauleskalns) were united by nostalgia for the free world, for their travels of former days, their studies and the bridges that the French language offered to a culture that, sentimentalised by the undying pathos of the Revolution, was and remained a symbol of freedom. But their range of interests also went beyond simple discussion and sharing of views inspired by the treasures of French culture. They engaged in translating, hunting down, digging up and gathering together all that might help them breathe in this cage they were trapped in. At the same time, the meetings often focussed on current developments in theatre, art and literature in Latvia. Information, when it comes into contact with the consciousness and spirit of a living and breathing person oppressed behind the Iron Curtain, produces a dangerous chemical reaction. The repression began long before the arrests and the sentences for "treason against the motherland", which meant 25 years in exile. Put to task were all the traditional methods of breaking and silencing people employed in the time of occupation: blatant, jeering criticism, withholding any opportunity for public expression, and simply passing over in silence. The existence of Fridrihsons' courageous little drawings (and likewise the drama of the lofty, principles he sustains in his intimate letters to his wife from Siberia) testifies to human spiritual reserves that often remain unknown and untapped under "normal" conditions. Day after day. He drew with coal, soot and even pieces of brick for a year and a half, until he could obtain paint from home. It was an act of non-submission. An act of survival, an affirmation to one's existence - every day. The minimal availability of technical aids served to develop the tense painter with his presentation and even manipulation of colour intensity that we know from his status as an iconographer. At the time there was only concentration, a great mobilisation of expression, when it was unimportant what the hand was actually drawing: a desert-like horizon with electricity poles as the only vertical feature in this existential vastness, or the gentle, almost sweet faces - visions of a lost time of paradise. Or the truly realistic portraits. (Hundreds of portraits of prisoners travelled back to their homes in place of photographs.) Or charming little scenes of his homeland, scenes born of anguish, miniatures with silhouettes of loved-ones like signposts in an overpowering flow of time. Even in this captivity that cripples the personality, he was slashing open his horizons. Already at that time he began the journeys into classical culture, into the visual fascination of the Arab world and reminiscences of Western European culture, which would hereafter always be with him, as attested by Italian scenes and series of works on Scandinavian and Spanish themes. " ...an artist has his own tower. One might say simply - a viewing tower. But maybe also a fortress. An artist must be armed. He has so often been the target of attack, ridicule and contempt. But an artist stands outside the arena in which the age fights its battles. If he is in his viewing tower, but has nevertheless somehow ended up in the arena ("just a musician"), he is a victim (or later a hero who has been passed by), or maybe he is simply redundant. Or rather, he is a member of the underground, of the resistance. In the Decembrists, the French Resistance and the "French Group"." This is how Fridrihsons summed it up many years after his exile. | |
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