Restoration

The Zuzāns Collection is taken care of by professional restorers who ensure the preservation and restoration of the artworks and participate in the exhibition installation and disassembling work to monitor the condition of each piece. The conservation specialists of the Zuzāns Collection mostly work in the restoration of classic painting restoration and the restoration of modern and contemporary art. Each of these specialties has its challenges. Painting restorers work with paintings on canvas, cardboard, and other materials. They must deeply explore the unique painting technologies of each piece. Many classical paintings acquired for the collection have been previously repaired or restored. Restorers also deal with the consequences of previous poor quality restoration work and make records of irreversible damage. 

Conservation of modern and contemporary art likewise requires detailed study of each work and constant mastering of new skills. Contemporary art frequently uses unconventional materials, like various kinds of plastic, for which there are no decades-long tried and tested methods of preservation. Thus, exploring the structure, materials and artist’s intent informs the development of the conservation and restoration programme and the future storage conditions for each artwork.

One of the most ambitious recent restoration projects is the monumental composition by Jānis Ferdinands Tīdemanis, currently being restored by master restorer Liene Jansone, who began work on it in May 2024.

Forced to flee Latvia in autumn 1944, Tīdemanis never completed the painting. Soon after the work was painted, it was unmounted from the stretcher; the canvas was initially rolled but later also folded and flattened. The canvas has been subjected to crumpling and scrunching, which has caused the ground and paint layer in the damaged parts to crack and in some cases peel away. The painting was at some point partially restored, and repairs in the form of painting over have been extensive; however, the deformation of the canvas has not been addressed. The bad condition of the piece supports the assumption of some art historians that the painting, which at some point disappeared from the studio of Jānis Tīdemanis in Skolas Street, Riga, could be one of the 47 taken by the artist as he hastily departed to Switzerland as a refugee. 

The restorer of the Zuzāns Collection has thinned the uneven layer of synthetic varnish applied during the previous restoration and removed the overpaint. Preventive reinforcement of the paint layer has been carried out in some places and straightening of the canvas base has been started. The extensive restoration work on the painting has not been completed yet.

An interesting example of modern art restoration was the project of restoring ‘Spacewalk’ by Zenta Logina, a picture painted using unconventional techniques; Anastasija Skopenkova carried it out. Apart from some traditionally painted works, this was the first of the late paintings by Zenta Logina to get restored.

A significant role in research and restoration was played by the fact that, alongside Logina’s art, the Zuzāns Collection also holds her art materials and notes recording her experiments with various paints, varnishes and pigments. The Zuzāns Collection archive also has a study for the ‘Spacewalk’ painting, outlining the artist’s clear vision of its composition and colour scheme. 

The base of the abstract three-dimensional painting is cotton canvas on a stretcher. A relief composition is affixed to the canvas using wire, featuring two hollow half-spheres connected by a bent relief rope. A unique visual effect has been achieved in the painting by layering different paints and varnishes, resulting in what may look like oil painting at first glance. The painting required restoration procedures due to tears in the canvas and partial loss of paint and varnish layers. The main problem was not merely repairing the tears but finding an ethical way of restoring the painting. The losses had to be filled imitating the artist’s complex technique while using reversible restoration materials.

The restoration and process of research of the Spacewalk painting helped form a much better understanding of the technique and artistic devices employed by Logina. By identifying and examining the materials used in creating the artwork one by one, an approach that ensured a high-quality and ethical restoration work was gradually developed. Unconventional solutions for enforcing and tinting the layers of paint were applied to conform with the specific properties of the artwork and principles of compatibility and reversibility of the materials. The knowledge accumulated during the process of research and restoration can be applied to other works by Logina, as well as artworks from the same period created by different artists using the relevant technique.