First Modernist Women Artists in Latvia and Their Paths Into the International Art Scene

chapter 16 First Modernist Women Artists in Latvia and Their Paths into the International Art Scene Baiba Vanaga Abstract In the early twentieth century, a number of Latvian women artists, among them Milda Grīnfelde, Otīlija Leščinska, and Lūcija Kuršinska, received training from European and Russian modernist artists and showed their artworks in exhibitions of modern art. The growth of Latvian modern art, however, is connected with the late 1910s and 1920s; its main force was the Riga Artists’ Group, an association of young, mostly Russian educated painters and sculptors, who had connections to the European modernist trends. The only two female artists in this group—sculptress Marta Liepiņa-Skulme and painter Aleksandra Beļcova—played significant roles in the development of modernism in Latvia and participated in major local and some international arts exhibitions. It is 1924. The French purists Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jean- neret are publishing a journal called L’Esprit Nouveau, and in its pages readers can find reproductions of cubist artworks by two female artists—the painter Aleksandra Beļcova and the sculptor Marta Liepiņa-Skulme.1 Who were these two women, who became the most prominent of the early Latvian mod ernists? Before turning to their biographies and those of a few other early Latvian modernist women artists and their paths into the international art scene, it is worth briefly recalling the context of the time period in which they worked. The territory of Latvia was a part of the Russian Empire until the estab- lishment of the independent Latvian state in 1918, but as early as the mid- nineteenth century Latvian women were actively seeking possibilities to learn the artist’s profession and participating in the local and international art scenes. Here, as in the most of Europe, education in the field of art was difficult for women to pursue; however, it might be added, the same was true for Lat- vian men, as the first school of art in the Latvian territory was only established 1 Roman Sutta, “Lettonie” (Latvia), L’Esprit Nouveau (New Spirit), 1924, No. 25, no page numbers. © Baiba Vanaga, ��7 | doi �0.��63/9789004333�47_0�8 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC License. Baiba Vanaga - 9789004333147 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:44:47PM via free access <UN> 222 Vanaga in 1873, when the Baltic German artist Elise von Jung-Stilling (1829–1904), who trained in Dresden, opened a school of drawing in Riga. Jung-Stilling’s school was the first art school in the southern Baltic region to be established by a woman,2 and it laid the foundations for art education in Latvia. The school was particularly popular among women of German origin, and in 1904 there were about 105 students.3 After the death of Elise von Jung-Stilling, her school was taken over by the city of Riga and became the Riga City School of Art in 1906; painter Vilhelms Purvītis (1872–1945) became its director in 1909. Purvītis reorganized the school, reduced its fees, and increased the number of scholarships in order to reduce the prevalence of female students and provide opportunities for tal- ented students with lesser means to study art. As a result, the ratio of male- to-female students increased dramatically: In the fall of 1908 the school had 34 female and only 11 male students, but by the beginning of 1915, men were in the majority, with 50 female and 70 male students.4 A number of future rep- resentatives of Latvian Classical Modernism began their art education there shortly before World War i. Another popular art education institution in Riga before World War i was a drawing and painting school established by a graduate from the Imperial Acade- my of Arts in St. Petersburg, the Jewish artist Wenjamin Bluhm (1861–1919) in 1895. In 1904, the school had about 107 students and its graduates included both male and female artists of Russian, German, Jewish, and Latvian origin.5 A further important aspect of basic art education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a series of private art studios. It is likely that the absence of serious local professional institutions of art education forced young artists to study abroad—especially in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, as well as such European art centers as Dres- den, Munich, Paris and others. Early in the twentieth century, some female artists from Latvia studied with European and Russian modernist artists and exhibited their works in international exhibitions of modern art, but, with the exception of Aleksandra Beļcova and Marta Liepiņa-Skulme, this was a short 2 Jeremy Howard, East European Art 1650–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 112. 3 L., “V.I. Blūma zīmēšanas un gleznošanas skola” (V.I. Blūms’s Painting and Drawing School), Baltijas Vēstnesis (Baltic Herald), 1904, no. 12, January 16 (29): 3. 4 “Oтчeты o дeятeльнocти шкoлы” (Reports on School’s Activities), Latvian State Historical Archives, fund 1417, description 1, file 2, 21 and 111. 5 L., “V.I. Blūma zīmēšanas un gleznošanas skola”. Baltijas Vēstnesis. 1904, no. 12, January 16 (29): 3. Baiba Vanaga - 9789004333147 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:44:47PM via free access <UN> First Modernist Women Artists in Latvia 223 episode in their lives; most of them remained unknown and are not even mentioned in Latvian art history books. Some Latvian art researchers have suggested that the first female artist of Latvian origin to exhibit her work abroad was Milda Grīnfelde (nee Brandt, 1881–1966),6 who exhibited three of her artworks at the Société des Artistes In- dépendents exhibition, the so called Salon des Indépendents, in Paris, in 1913. But she was preceded by two other women artists from Latvia: Baltic German painter Alice Dannenberg (1861–1948), the graduate of the Jung-Stilling drawing school, who together with the Swiss painter Martha Stettler established a private art school, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, in Paris, and the Bal- tic German painter and engraver Ida Fielitz (1847?–after 1913). Dannenberg’s participation in the Independent Salon goes back to at least 1905,7 and Fielitz exhibited in the 1907 Salon.8 Milda Grīnfelde began her art education with the founders of the Latvian national school of painting, Vilhelms Purvītis and Janis Rozentāls (1966–1916) in Riga. She married the railway engineer Edgars Grīnfelds and followed him to the small town of Osa, in Perm Krai, Russia. In 1907, Grīnfelde gave birth to her son Nilss and during the winter of 1907/1908, she travelled to Moscow, where she studied under the landscape painters Nikolai Kholyavin and Stan- islav Zhukowski. Later in 1908, Grīnfelde travelled to Paris and spent the next four winters there auditing classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. She also studied at the workshop of the post-impressionist Henri Martin, supposedly a private art school called Académie Vitti, where he taught (figs. 16.1, 16.2). From Paris, she regularly sent letters with descriptions of her studies and impressions of Parisian life to her husband in Osa, who waited every spring for her to return home. In December 1911, Grīnfelde mentioned opportunities to exhibit her artworks in Paris: Today I paid a fee to the Independent Artists [the Société des Artistes Indépendents], and that means that I might be able to exhibit artworks there. The exhibition won’t be organized until March. Last year it was 6 Ženija Sūna-Peņģerote, “Pirmās latviešu gleznotājas” (First Latvian Women Painters), Latviete (Latvian Woman), 1936, No. 6–11, 43; Genoveva Tidomane, “Grīnfelde Milda”, in Māksla un arhitektūra biogrāfijās (Art and Architecture in Biographies), vol 1 (Riga: Latvijas enciklopēdija, 1995), 180. 7 “Various art matters,” The New York Times, April 22, 1905, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/ archive-free/pdf?res=9402E0D7133AE733A25751C2A9629C946497D6CF. 8 “Ida A. Fielitz,” in Jochen Schmidt-Liebich, ed., Lexikon der Künstlerinnen 1700–1900. Deutsch- land, Österreich, Schweiz (Dictionary of Women Artists 1700–1900: Germany, Austria, Switzer- land) (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2005), 139. Baiba Vanaga - 9789004333147 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:44:47PM via free access <UN> 224 Vanaga Figure 16.1 Milda Grīnfelde, Girl with a Hat, c. 1910, oil on cardboard, 35 × 25 cm private collection, riga Figure 16.2 Milda Grīnfelde, Still Life. At the Window, c. 1913, oil on canvas, 58 × 65 cm latvian national museum of art, riga possible to send 6 paintings, but this year only 3. That is bad because it’s not enough to really demonstrate my personality. It is an enormous exhibition, with some 15,000 exhibits. I grew dizzy visiting it. I will also try to exhibit with the Société des Artistes Français, and that will not be hard: all that I have to do is present one of my paintings to good old Martin, and that will be that. No fee is needed to take part there. It is an ‘official’ salon. Baiba Vanaga - 9789004333147 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 08:44:47PM via free access <UN> First Modernist Women Artists in Latvia 225 There is a second, equally official salon, the Société Nationale des Beaux- Arts. It is hard for foreigners to exhibit artworks there without a recom- mendation. […] Both exhibitions are bad because there is a great deal of patronage there. There are many old men. Pictures with white frames are not accepted, and all paintings have to have golden frames. The Indepen- dent Salon allows one to become better known, and that means receiving invitations to exhibitions.9 The letter suggested that Grīnfelde had already planned to take part in the Salon des Indépendents in 1912, after a Cubism scandal had emerged during the previous year.

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