RIGA.- An exhibition of Sigita Daugule’s paintings under the title Walls is presented in the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (Jaņa Rozentāla laukums 1) from 1 June to 4 August 2024.

As a painter, Sigita Daugule is inspired by the urban environment with everything that humans have created there. In the city she gathers impressions, paying particular attention to walls, their textures and colours brought by the ravages of time and human hands. Anything can serve as an impulse for a painting – boards with layers of peeling paint, damp stains and their rough texture on the wall of a building, a writing or drawing on a facade that has not been painted for years, and other everyday details that many do not notice. The artist preserves it all in memory and later uses in her works, applying paint layer by layer, creating texture, polishing and otherwise working the surface of the painting.

The works in this exhibition were made keeping in mind the specific venue – the 4th Floor Exhibition Halls of the main building of the Latvian National Museum of Art. The painter says about the project: “The two smaller rooms with board-cladded walls appealed to me first with the opportunity to create a painting installation which would completely mimic the surrounding environment and bring together two directions I practice in my painting – expressionism and photorealism. The exposition in the elongated hall with the glass floor will be different, and here I plan to present a single monumental work (more than 10 meters in length), which will continue my long-running series on traces left by humans in urban environment. In Latvian art, true large-format painting has currently almost died out, more or less adapting to the demands of the market, therefore I believe that the development and creation of this kind of art is essential and lacking in the overall picture of Latvian painting.”

Sigita Daugule graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia (1998), where she studied monumental painting under professors Indulis Zariņš and Alexey Naumov. For three years after completing her studies, Sigita Daugule lived and worked in Austria and Germany, with support from the Federal Chancellery of Austria and KulturKontakt Austria scholarship in Vienna (1999, 2000) as well as Künstlerhaus Lukas scholarship in Ahrenshoop (2001). Later, as the first representative of Latvia, she received the artist residence programme quartier 21 scholarship for professional growth in Vienna (2010).

Since 1998, Sigita Daugule regularly holds solo exhibitions, takes part in group exhibitions and projects in Latvia, Austria, Germany, and other countries. Her works are held in the collections of the Latvian National Museum of Art, Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, Swedbank Contemporary Art Collection, Zuzāns Collection, Luciano Benetton’s Imago Mundi Collection as well as different private collections in Latvia and abroad. In 2017, Neputns publishers released a richly-illustrated catalogue of Sigita Daugule’s works.

Text by Baiba Vanaga