In sculpture, as in other forms of art, there are radical differences between the type of cultural contacts that existed in the first half of the 20th century and the strictly regimented system of contacts that prevailed after the war. At the beginning of the century, when professional experience was being accumulated by Gustavs Skilters, Teodors Zalkalns and Burkards Dzenis, they could not find proper conditions for their work in their fatherland, so they lived and worked outside of Latvia. With the help of scholarships from the Stieglitz school, they first traveled to Paris, where they encountered the artistic principles of Rodin. Representatives of the next generation - Karlis Zale, Emils Melderis and Marta Skulme - obtained their professional training in Russia, and during a time of social transformations, they encountered radically avant-garde ideas, traveling to the cultural centers of Europe and seeking to expand their links to the various directions of modem art. In the late 1920s and in the 1930s, some sculptors who produced monuments and who received money from the Latvian Cultural Fund also went on extended trips, e.g., to Egypt. Sculptors were still enchanted with France, Italy and Greece, better contacts were developed with the Scandinavian countries. During this period there was expanded cooperation with foreign partners in the purchase of materials and in dealing with various technical issues. In the post-war period, there was no longer any freedom of choice in studying the cultural experience of other countries and in cooperating with foreigners. There were, however, certain ties to the closest neighboring republics of Lithuania and Estonia. A Baltic sculptural exhibition was staged in Riga in 1958. After the early 1970s, there were slightly broader opportunities for international contacts. Beginning in 1972, there were regular sculpture quadrennials in Riga, which became an important center for sculpture. After 1979 the expansion of international contacts was facilitated by annual sculpture symposia that were held in Dzintari.
Latvian Classical Modernism is a movement which appeared around the time of World War I, and at the European level it may well seem to have been a delayed phenomenon. The fact is, however, that Latvian culture as such was very new at that time. There were few people who could promote the influences and international contacts of modem art in Latvia, and in any event these processes were hindered both by Latvia's economic situation and by its geographic remoteness from the cultural centers of Western Europe. It was the painter Jazeps Grosvalds, employed in 1919 at the Latvian embassy in Paris, who began to shape links between Latvian and French culture. After he died in 1920, the cooperation was continued by artist Romans Suta, who published articles about the new Latvian art in the French journal L'Esprit Nouveau in 1921 and 1924. Sculptor Karlis Zale in 1922 attended the congress of Union Inernationaler Fortschrittlicher Kunstler in Dusseldorf, and, in collaboration with Arnolds Dzirkalis and Iwan Puni, he published a proclamation in the journal De Stijl. Filippo Tomaso Marinetti, writing in the monthly Der Futurismus in 1922, published a manifesto of Futurism which was illustrated by a Cubist bust produced by Zale. In 1923, Niklavs Stnunke, Karlis Zale, Arnolds Dzirkalis and Sigismunds Vidbergs were invited by the German Novembergruppe to exhibit works at the Great Berlin Art Exhibition. In the same year, also in Berlin, Zale and Dzirkalis produced the first art journal in Latvian, Laikmets, which contained information about the theoretic and philosophical underpinnings of the avant-garde movement. In 1924 a group of artists from Riga exhibited in Tartu and Tallinn, which were the first Latvian art exhibitions abroad. Also in 1924, Latvian artists and members of the Polish group Blok staged a joint exhibition in Riga but in I925 Aleksandra Be!cova, Romans Suta and Erasts Sveics showed works at the Parisian exhibition L'Art d'Aujourd'hui.
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