RIGA.- The Spiral, an exhibition of Māra Kažociņa’s paintings, is being presented in the LNMA’s cycle The Generation in the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga from 10 December 2021 to 6 February 2022.

Māra Kažociņa occupies an outlying place in the overall picture of Latvian art. The painter was predominantly drawn to a metaphorical interpretation of the surrounding world. She consistently strove to imbue reality with another, deeper meaning, rejecting didactic content and petty details. It is demonstrated already by The Spiral (1961), a composition from her study years, whose title has become the title of this exhibition. It perfectly characterises the essence and uniformity of her entire oeuvre of over thirty years.

Māra Kažociņa very rationally approached everything that had to do with painting, craft and skill, she strove to study, master it to perfection, seeking to weave together the roots of her art with impulses from the world in the most harmonious possible equilibrium, keeping a conscious distance from the reality of Soviet life and its representation on canvas. Likewise, in terms of painterly expression, Māra Kažociņa’s works are laconic, robust, ascetic, with a high degree of abstraction and stylisation. Such pensive, introvert, existential message captivated viewers under the conditions of Soviet double-morals, because of which Māra Kažociņa’s paintings were noticed already at that time and, as we can see, it still retains its relevance in the 21st century.

Māra Kažociņa was born on 17 July 1936 in Riga in the family of Eduards Kažociņš (1891–1965), a choir conductor, employee of the Latvian National Opera and Ballet Theatre of many years, tenor and brother of composer Kārlis Kažociņš, and Laura Kažociņa (1903–1944), a civil servant. Māra developed an interest in art already in childhood, as her father was not only a talented musician but also an avid amateur painter. While studying at the Riga Secondary School No. 3, Māra started to attend the People’s Visual Art Studio of the Trade Unions’ Central House of Culture, headed by the watercolourist Eduards Jurķelis, in addition studying privately with the then-young painter Edgars Iltners, whom she considered her real teacher.

Studies at the Department of Painting of the Art Academy of Latvia followed (1957–1963). From November 1963 until her death, Māra Kažociņa worked as an artist-decorator at the Riga Medical Institute, preparing designs for interiors and events and producing illustrations for articles in medical publications. Yet she never forgot about her true calling – to be a painter. In 1969, Māra Kažociņa became a member of the Artists’ Union of Latvia and immediately began taking active part in the plain-air painting sessions, seminars, public works that it organised. The painter’s life came to an abrupt end on 26 August 1992 in Ventspils, where she was taken from an artists’ plain-air in Pāvilosta. Māra Kažociņa is buried at the Forest Cemetery in Riga.

Māra Kažociņa’s paintings are held in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) and the Artists’ Union of Latvia, the museums of Liepāja, Ogre and Talsi, State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow as well as private collections in Latvia, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, and the USA.

During her lifetime, the artist held more than 20 personal exhibitions and several memorial exhibitions have been held after her death, yet this is the first exhibition of Māra Kažociņa’s works at the Latvian National Museum of Art, bringing together more than 30 canvases from the collections of the LNMA and Patriks Markēvičs.

Text by: Irēna Bužinska