Līga Purmale. The Garden of Past Pleasures
From 8 February to 10 August 2025, as part of the cycle The Generation, artist Līga Purmale's personal exhibition The Garden of Past Pleasures will be presented in the right wing exhibition halls on the 2nd floor of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art (Jaņa Rozentāla laukumā 1, Riga), focusing on the artist's fifty-year career, including works from photorealism and up to new creations from this year.
Līga Purmale (1948) is an outstanding Latvian painter whose oeuvre shows constant formal and thematic development. Since her early childhood the artist spent much time reading and drawing. Therefore, inspired by her mother, Vallija Purmale (who was a drawing teacher at the Dundaga Secondary School), Līga began studies at the Janis Rozentāls Riga Art High School (1961-1968) and, following secondary school, joined the Monumental Painting Workshop at the Teodors Zaļkalns Art Academy of the Latvian SSR (1969-1975) under Indulis Zariņš (1929-1997). Already during her studies, the artist announced herself loudly and unmistakably. In 1974, together with her partner in studies and life, artist Miervaldis Polis (1948), they organised their first shared exhibition in the premises of the photo club Riga in the Central Club of the Polygraphics in Riga. For the first time, both artists presented their works painted in a photorealist style to a broader audience, becoming originators of this trend in Latvia.
Following her photorealist period (1973-1976), the artist started painting her surrounding environment in close-up – interior elements (Window, 1978) and garden fragments (Yard Corner in Winter, 1977). In these works, with utmost sensitivity, the artist studies the material world, plants, times of the day and seasons. The works represent seemingly restrained yet emotionally observant, casually framed views that simultaneously strive towards documentation of reality and intimacy.
From the early 1980s, Līga Purmale turns to landscape painting, no longer producing close-ups. She strives to depict everything exactly as it is in real life (In Winter, 1981). During this period, the artist started painting her characteristic misty landscapes (Pasture, 1980). Having discarded all that is unnecessary, the landscape became emptier, lighter and mistier (In the Rain, 1988). This approach reached its culmination in the early 1990s, when the mist dominates and only vague contours of the landscape are visible in the paintings.
In the 1990s, Purmale starts painting urban life, its rhythm and environments: cafes, junctions and pedestrian crossings, representatives of subcultures, tango dancers, boxers and graffiti artists. Thus, in her exhibition and cycle of paintings CITY TOUR (2009), which took place in the Riga Gallery (curator Inese Riņķe), Līga Purmale portrays city life as though in a snapshot taken from the window of a tourist bus. This series of paintings shows the artist's perspective on the contemporary city and its characteristic symbols in a concentrated fashion.
Meanwhile, in her 2012 series of works, Flashback, Līga Purmale returns to the principles of photorealism. Through the prism of her family, the artist reflects on the events in Latvian history from the early 20th century until 1975, when she started her professional artist's career. Purmale drew inspiration for these works from personal memories, family photo albums, books from the home library (on the margins of which she made drawings in her childhood) and selected press photographs typical of their time. This dense series of paintings fuses the past and the present.
Later, the artist briefly returns to nature (personal exhibition What's in the Garden (Gallery Daugava, curator Anda Treija)) and paints close-ups, reflections and plays of light visible in the garden – foliage, flowers and berries from the perspective of an insect.
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 exhibition halls on the 2nd floor of the main building of LNMA. Exhibitions have been held for such important figures in Latvian art 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, Aija Jurjāne, Rolands Kaņeps, Līga Purmale. Under preparation are exhibitions of Māra Vaičunas, Aija Ozoliņa.