Izstāde "Raimonds Staprāns. Klusuma arhitektūra"

Raimonds Staprāns' centennial exhibition highlights previously unseen works in Latvia and creates an intense story about the master's oeuvre from his earliest works in the 1950s to the latest ones he painted in the 21st century, allowing to trace how Staprāns' unique painting handwriting has changed over seventy years. His art flourished in the heyday of abstract expressionism. No matter how abstractly Staprāns tried to paint, he was always drawn to figurative, landscape, or still life motifs, and the artist remained with them, joining the circle of Bay Area Painting.

From abstract expressionism, Staprāns learned the "architecture" of painting, how a painting is constructed. "A painting must be able to 'stand' like a building," the artist said. Staprāns' painting is mysterious, distinguished by a strictly architectural composition and a palette brought to a certain ultimate feeling, filled with internal tension. This is an intellectual language of painting – Staprāns does not explain the world, but with precise visual means creates an emotionally and aesthetically saturated and tense space of silence. Every Staprāns painting is like a cut diamond created in a long, slow process.

At the end of World War II, Raimonds Staprāns (1926–2026), at the age of eighteen, went into exile to Germany with his family. As early as 1947, the family immigrated to the USA and settled in Salem, Oregon. In 1948, at the University of Washington in Seattle, Staprāns began studying painting and drama, earning a bachelor's degree (1948–1952), and defended his master of fine arts thesis at the University of California, Berkeley (1952–1954). Later, San Francisco became his home, where Raimonds Staprāns built his career as an artist and playwright.