The relevance of Auseklis Baušķenieks’ legacy today has to do with his interest in human beings – their everyday life, relationships with family, public mood and the cycle of life. The artist has pointed out that the popular Soviet slogan “the most important thing is the human” corresponds with his painting, and he attempted to show this ever-wanting and insatiable creature – the human – from different perspectives. By revealing human weaknesses, Baušķenieks shows that it is part of the lived experience that each of us passes through. It is through Baušķenieks’ works that we can see that despite the changing times and regimes the standards of what an individual or family should be and how political discourses are made are largely wrong and often unattainable.
The exhibition Visionary of the Times. Auseklis Baušķenieks is dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre in which he turns to questions of the human being, society, science and technology. The exposition consists of four parts that merge into each other – human as an individual, human and family, human and society, science and the future. To gain insight into the Baušķenieks’ interest in amateur radio, the exhibition also includes three kinetic objects created by the artist himself.
About the artist
Auseklis Baušķenieks (1910–2007) studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Latvia (1930–1933), learned drawing and pastel painting from Vilhelms Purvītis, later entered the Art Academy of Latvia where he graduated from the Master Workshop of Figurative Painting (1933–1942). During World War II, Baušķenieks ended up in a labour camp in Germany and returned to Riga in 1946. He worked as an artist-decorator (1947–1948) and headed a visual arts club at the Pioneer Castle in Riga (1949–1962). In the second half of the 1950s the artist resumed painting and taking part in exhibitions. Despite the fact that Auseklis Baušķenieks’ first solo show took place only in 1975, he became one of the most popular Latvian painters, having held 22 one-man exhibitions and a major retrospective exhibition at the Latvian National Museum of Art (2010).
Text by Agnese Zviedre
