Auseklis Baušķenieks

An outstanding Latvian avant-garde artist, one of the most popular and original painters of the second half of the 20th century, often called the patriarch of Latvian modern art.

Having chosen an absolutely individual way and style in the visual arts, Auseklis Baušķenieks said, «I am looking for suggestions for my paintings from the environment, from everyday life, I am realistic in the form of work.” At the same time, he skillfully used the technique of pointillism and continued French post-impressionist traditions.

Always benevolent and witty in life, Baus (this is how he signed his paintings) created abstruse multifaceted works, sometimes dramatically detailed. Household plots of his works became surrealistic, filled with grotesque collisions based on life observations.

The artist’s legacy allows you to see other aspects of his art – for example, he contributed to business graphics, creating posters and labels for goods and products.

Despite accusations of retreating from the canons of social realism, the artist became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR, and his works were exhibited during his lifetime in Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Russia, the USA, France and Australia. The works of A. Baušķenieks are in museums and private collections in Latvia and abroad; they are in demand at art auctions.

Key ideas:

– Auseklis Baušķenieks created, judging by the majority of the plots, genre paintings, widely using elements of satire, and sometimes grotesque. Apart from action-related compositions, often based on social and environmental events, he painted original subject portraits.

– The works of the painter have a peculiar style: he combined the styles of primitive (naive) folk art and surrealism. At the same time, he actively used the well-established traditions of the method of pointillism (small strokes-dots) and a delicate flavor characteristic of this branch of Post-impressionism.

– Mastering the oil technique, the artist worked in soft pastel tones, interpreted the shapes of the depicted objects and characters quite realistically. Baušķenieks called himself a realist, but his realism served as a means of giving the chosen plot different shades of irreality, fairy tale or mythicity.

– In genre paintings, where there are no allegories or any surrealistic tendencies, the artist also used neo-impressionist techniques, although not quite literally. In contrast to the ideologists of pointillism G. Seurat and Paul Signac, who proposed to put dots of pure color, which then mixed in the eyes of the audience, the Latvian master also used shades of palette.

– Having a peculiar style not only in painting, but also in graphic drawing, Auseklis Baušķenieks developed it in his work on the creation of typographic products – mainly poster.

– Modest in life and stormy in his art Baus created many paintings, filled with optimism and a sense of humor. The artist always managed to stick to his credo – to be famous, while remaining unpredictable and unknown.