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1

Autoru meklejumos: Baltijas un Peterburgas vacu makslas kritiki 19.-20. gs. mija un vinu ieguldijums latviesu makslas popularizesana

100%

Abele K.

Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei

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2012

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vol. 8

98-124

EN

The reader is invited to follow the researcher on her way from the abbreviated signature marks to obvious or hidden clues for eventual attribution of their owners and further on to often extraordinary biographies. The venture results in bringing together a colourful society of personalities interested in art who were born between the late 1840s and mid 1880s and who represented partly incompatible aesthetic platforms and basically moved within the area between St. Petersburg and German cities, the most distant sites of activity being located in the USA. Among these people, architect and art historian Wilhelm Neumann (1849-1919) is one of the very few who already hold a place of prominence in our cultural history, but his regular reviews for ‘Rigaer Tageblatt’, signed with -n, N., N-n, -nn or W. N-n, still is an almost obscure fragment in the work of this versatile intellectual. Other dramatis personae elucidated in the narrative are: Woldemar Baron von Mengden (1867-1939, sign. W. B. M.) - secretary of the Riga Art Society (Riga(sch)er Kunstverein); Friedrich Moritz (1866-1947, sign. -tz) - painter and art critic of ‘Düna-Zeitung’ in Riga until his emigration to Berlin in 1906; Ernst von Blumenthal (1872-?, sign. -en-, -um-) - section editor of ‘Duna-Zeitung’ and afterwards ‘Rigasche Zeitung’; Alfred Blumenthal (1876-after 1939, sign. Alfred Bl., A. Bl., B-l (?)) - art-interested freelance contributor to ‘Düna-Zeitung’, Wilhelm Neumann’s godson but most likely no close relative of the editor; Dr. Alfred Ruetz (1876-1955, sign. A. R.) - co-publisher and editor of ‘Rigasche Rundschau’, next to his father Richard Ruetz; Gerhard von Rosen (1856-1927, sign. G. v. R.) - painter and contributor to ‘Rigasche Rundschau’; Wilhelm Sawitzky (1879-1947, sign. W. S., S-y) - culture journalist in Tallinn (‘Revalsche Zeitung’) and Riga (‘Rigasche Rundschau’, ‘Rigasche Neueste Nachrichten’, ‘Baltische Post’) until 1911 when he left the Baltics for the USA to become a prominent researcher of early American painting in his later life; and many others.

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A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN: EVA MARGARETHE BORCHERT-SCHWEINFURTH IN THE ART LIFE OF RIGA IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY (Makslinieces portrets jauniba: Eva Margarete Borherte-Sveinfurte Rigas makslas dzive 20. gs. sakuma)

88%

Abele K.

Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei

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2004

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vol. 4

105-121

EN

Although Eva Margarethe Borchert-Schweinfurth (1878-1964) has been repeatedly praised as the most interesting figure in the whole early-century Baltic German art of Latvia and Estonia, her reputation of the first lady in Riga art life by the World War I so far has not been based on detailed biographical investigations. To the deepest regret of the present-day State Museum of Art, Borchert-Schweinfurth's daring artistic statements, including her 1908 life-size self-portrait with a palette, are destroyed. With very few minor exceptions, it is exclusiveely from black-and-white reproductions of the Baltic Art Yearbook ('Jahrbuch fur bildende Kunst in den Ostseeprovinzen') that we now can learn something of this lost chapter in the local art history. Still a lot of press reviews, archive materials and other sources allow to reconstruct the artist's early career in a great detail, making this intriguing figure more real. Eva Margarethe Schweinfurth was the twelfth child of a wealthy Riga wine merchant, and her initial progress was similar to that of many other women artists of her class: Elise Jung-Stilling's Art School in Riga, drawing instructor's certificate from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Art and several inspiring study years abroad, in Paris (1898, 1900 or 1901) and Munich (1901). Beside portraits, nudes, landscapes and interiors in oil, pastel, watercolour, various drawing materials and printing techniques, her first exhibitions included fantastic compositions suggesting a possible further development toward the fairy-land Symbolism of her future husband Bernhard Borchert's (1863-1945) work. In 1902 they married, and Eva Margarethe soon found her own true vocation in portraiture. Contemporary opinions about her mostly large-scale pastels and oil paintings of stately women images ranged from sheer admiration to resentment and rage. In about 1905-1910 Borchert-Schweinfurth visualised the spirit of modem womanhood in greatly impressive combinations of imposing attitudes with the 'vertical stripe manner', her bold Neo-Impressionist brushwork that marked the culmination of her creativity.

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FELLOW NATIONALS AND COMPATRIOTS: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND TERRITORIAL IDENTITY IN THE ART LIFE OF LATVIA IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY (Tautiesi un novadnieki: Nacionalais jautajums un teritoriala identitate Latvijas makslas dzive 19. gs.

63%

Abele K.

Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei

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2006

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vol. 5

39-63

EN

'If we accept that painting has nothing to do with language and that it can be no less international than music, then there still remains something disputable. It is generally known that every nation tries to develop its particularity as much as an individual tries to develop his one', Latvian writer, art critic and painter Janis Jaunsudrabins wrote in the newspaper 'Latvija' in January 1910, where he commented on the rise of the multi-national Baltic Artists' Association (Baltischer Kunstlerbund) and came to a strictly nationalist conclusion: 'To foster this national particularity, our artists must develop more intimate contacts among themselves and with their nation. An organization that unites four or even five nations under German banner will never have such aims that our painters would like to set for themselves.' Jaunsudrabins was neither absolutely wrong nor right but like most of his contemporaries he was deeply concerned with the national question - constantly present in the art life of the future Latvia since the late 19th century until the rise of the independent national state. In this emancipation period of Latvian national professional art the local art scene was dominated by German and Latvian cultural forces whose co-existence ranged from mutual interest and inspiring rivalry to politicised conflicts. Focusing on contact areas in the artistic interests of those ethnic groups which inhabited the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire, the article explores this scene as a field of interplay between local patriotism, nationalism and the art's general universalism in a changing society that was disturbed by historical collisions. The story covers roughly two decades from the Latvian Ethnographic Exhibition 1896 over the storms in and around the revolution year 1905 until the eve of World War I.

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3 Materiali Latvijas makslas vesturei

3 Abele K.

1 2012

1 2006

1 2004

Autoru meklejumos: Baltijas un Peterburgas vacu makslas kritiki 19.-20. gs. mija un vinu ieguldijums latviesu makslas popularizesana

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN: EVA MARGARETHE BORCHERT-SCHWEINFURTH IN THE ART LIFE OF RIGA IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY (Makslinieces portrets jauniba: Eva Margarete Borherte-Sveinfurte Rigas makslas dzive 20. gs. sakuma)

FELLOW NATIONALS AND COMPATRIOTS: THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND TERRITORIAL IDENTITY IN THE ART LIFE OF LATVIA IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY (Tautiesi un novadnieki: Nacionalais jautajums un teritoriala identitate Latvijas makslas dzive 19. gs.