Memorial collections

The Zuzāns Collection includes two memorial collections dedicated to Latvian artists, comprising personal documents, photographs and household objects of the artists alongside their actual artworks. Each collection unveils the artist’s unique life story, offering insight into the final artwork and a closer look at the creative process behind it. The memorial collections of Zenta Logina and Visvaldis Ziediņš are unique in that they help to learn more about two Soviet-era artists whose artistic activities were private and took place outside the official art system and its institutions, allowing them to enjoy artistic freedom atypical for the time and place.

Zenta Logina (née Kņope, 1908–1983) and Elīza Atāre (née Kņope, 1915–1993) are sisters, pioneers of Latvian abstract art. Zenta Logina worked in a number of genres and styles and in various media like painting, sculpture and textile art. Her sister Elīza made tapestries based on designs drawn by Zenta.

After a childhood spent between Riga and Moscow due to the events of World War I, Zenta Logina started her studies at the Department of Painting of the Latvian Art Academy under Romans Suta in 1925. Three years later, however, she dropped out of the Academy while continuing to take private classes with Romans Suta and Sergei Vinogradov. From 1932, Logina showed her still lifes, landscapes and portraits at various group painting exhibitions and was admitted to the painters’ section of the Latvian Artists’ Union in 1945. However, her Artists’ Union membership card was annulled in 1950, banning her from showing at official painting exhibitions. The stated grounds for expulsion were formalism and failure to conform to the principles of Socialist Realism. Three years later Logina was admitted to the Section of Applied Arts of the Latvian Artists’ Union, allowing her to take part in applied arts shows exclusively.

From 1944 onward, the two sisters resided in a flat at 6 Blaumaņa Street that doubled as their studio. There, the abstract three-dimensional paintings were created and Elīza made tapestries based on sketches by Zenta. While Elīza Atāre contributed to creating these artworks, she never presented herself as an artist; after her sister passed away, she dedicated her time to preserving Zenta’s memory. On Elīza Atāre’s initiative, the first ever solo exhibition by Zenta Logina was mounted in 1987 at St Peter’s Church, featuring her late works.

Zenta Logina’s first solo exhibition took place on Elīza Atāre’s suggestion in 1987, showing art dating from her latter years. Following the show, a foundation ‘Museum of Zenta Logina’ was set up headed by Pēteris Ērglis with a mission to preserve a joint collection of artworks by Zenta Logina and Elīza Atāre and provide for its professional maintenance, research and promotion.

Following Elīza Atāre’s death in 1993, the foundation approached the city council of Riga, petitioning to preserve the flat in Blaumaņa Street as a museum; the city nevertheless proceeded to privatise the rooms. In June 201,9 the artistic legacy of Zenta Logina and Elīza Atāre, their archive and memorial objects became part of the Zuzāns Collection, which continues to take care of the preservation, researc,h and popularization of the memorial collection.

The memorial collection comprises a large number of diverse artworks created in various techniques and media spanning the time between the 1920s and 1993. Approximately 2400 paintings, graphic and sculptural artworks and works of textile art are complemented by private archive materials, books, household objects and art materials owned by the sisters, providing additional insight into the artistic legacy of Zenta Logina and Elīza Atāre. The archiving and research process of the collection is ongoing.

It was merely a decade ago that the wider public first became aware of the unique artistic legacy of the Latvian artist Visvaldis Ziediņš (1942–2007).

A native of Liepāja, Visvaldis Ziediņš was professionally trained at the Department of Decorative Design of Liepāja Applied Art School between 1959 and 1964. Deliberately isolating himself from the official Soviet art system, he did not pursue the obvious path of continuing his studies at the Latvian Art Academy, dedicating the rest of his life to independent creative experiments. Because of that, it was only following the artist’s death that an astonishing wealth of artworks were discovered at his studio at 2 Ostas Street, Liepāja: some 3000 drawings, paintings and objects dating between 1957 and 2006. The discovery of Ziediņš’ artworks and personal archives marked the beginning of an intensive four-year research project that resulted in his first solo show, the ‘Movement. Visvaldis Ziediņš (1942–2007)’ exhibition curated by Ieva Kalniņa at the Arsenāls Exhibition Hall of Latvian National Museum of Art in 2012. Two years later, the ‘Movement. Visvaldis Ziediņš (1942–2007). Discoveries in Latvian Art’ show made him the first ever Latvian artist to have a solo exhibition at the KUMU Estonian Art Museum.

Never one to pigeonhole himself into a single genre, Visvaldis Ziediņš did not shy away from experimenting with painting, printmaking, collage, woodwork and three-dimensional assemblage. He found inspiration in natural processes and examining them through the lens of a microscope, in flattened metal bottle crates and other trivial mundane objects that revealed artistic forms and images to him. From the 1960s onward, Ziediņš widely used found objects or ready-mades, integrating them into his artworks – an approach that took shape in his series of boxes. Ziediņš created various three-dimensional compositions using natural materials like driftwood and fragments of Soviet material culture: sardine tins, Communist membership badges and newspapers.

The memorial collection of Visvaldis Ziediņš was included into the Zuzāns Collection in 2009. The artworks are complemented by journals, notes, manuscripts and letters, as well as Ziediņš’ private archive that provides insight both into his personal life and artistic quest and the range of information on events and trends on the Western art scene that was available to the Soviet artists.