Biruta Delle. To Paint Every Day
From 27 January to 28 April 2024, the exhibition of Biruta Delle’s oeuvre To Paint Every Day, part of the cycle The Generation, is on view in the right wing galleries of the 2nd floor of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (Jaņa Rozentāla laukums 1).
Biruta Delle (1944) is a highly respected Latvian artist beloved by exhibition-goers, who has been painting for more than sixty years. Pedagogue Ansis Stunda taught her individually because he saw a special talent. “I no longer had free time – ever. But neither did I want it,” Delle writes in her autobiography (2007). After few years of studying at the Art Academy of Latvia under Konrāds Ubāns, she left the university. The young painter found support among the beatniks in cafe Kaza. Despite her incomplete education, Biruta Delle’s works have been admitted to exhibitions since 1967. In 1979 she held the first of several solo shows in the exhibition hall of the Artists’ Union of Latvia, in 1993 – at the State Museum of Art (now – Latvian National Museum of Art).
During the Soviet period, Delle lived as though in two parallel worlds: author’s works appeared in the official exhibition circuit, but everyday took place in an idealistic environment of mutual assistance that brought together a variety of outsiders. However, art undoubtedly remained in her focus: “I subjected the entire family to my painting. I felt no guilt, since I have never perceived myself as a woman – as a mother or wife. I was always a painter who had to fulfil a woman’s duties.”
Biruta Delle was very productive and realised daring projects – she set up ateliers far from Riga, worked with students in an informal studio – yet much of what she created in this manner is lost or destroyed. Her art likewise encompassed two directions: fanatic studies of nature and the outdoors, with a particular focus on the relationships between warm and cool areas, as well as ambitious multi-figure compositions that demonstrated the vivid imagination. While art historians have identified surrealist elements in Delle’s paintings, it is the practice of automatic sketching rather than the formal attributes of her work that links artist to this movement.
Biruta Delle has spoken publicly about the complications of her personal life: an episode of depression, meditation experience, health disorders and a conflict among her closest people which in 1993 had a lethal result. Also, about the difficult path of overcoming the crisis, in which the artist was helped by conversations with a priest and – by her work. “These talks had on me the effect of an oath: to paint every day.”
With enviable regularity Biruta Delle continues to hold solo exhibitions of latest works, her canvases are included in the largest national collections and owned by the many appreciators of her talent.
The exhibition To Paint Every Day presents author’s most popular, frequently-reproduced figurative compositions as well as landscapes from the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Museum of the Artists’ Union of Latvia, Zuzeum Art Centre, and private collections.
Text by Vilnis Vējš
About the exhibition cycle The Generation
Each generation belongs to an era. The Latvian National Museum of Art’s (LNMA) exhibition cycle The Generation began in 2016, focusing on art of the second half of the 20th century. The cycle’s programme is realised in the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls and since 2021 also in the right wing exposition halls on the 2nd floor of the main building of LNMA. The exhibitions devoted to many important figures in Latvian art have been held, such as Boriss Bērziņš, Felicita Pauļuka, Daina Riņķe, Henrijs Klēbahs, Līvija Endzelīna, Hilda Vīka, Gunārs Krollis, Džemma Skulme, Romualds Geikins, Daina Dagnija, Jānis Pauļuks, Māra Kažociņa, Inta Celmiņa, Auseklis Baušķenieks, Gunārs Cīlītis, Jānis Aivars Karlovs, Biruta Baumane, Lea Dāvidova-Medene, Imants Vecozols, Rūsiņš Rozīte, Biruta Delle. There are exhibitions in preparation for Aija Jurjāne, Rolands Kaņeps, Līga Purmale.
Text by Elita Ansone