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Sigurds Vīdzirkste

Sigurds Vīdzirkste

Artist, painter (1928-1974). Sigurds Vidzirkste was born on February 10, 1928 in a family of civil servants in Daugavpils. He got his first skills in art at the elementary school under the guidance of Janis Kalmite. His studies at the Department of Chemistry at the Riga State Technicum gave him the knowledge that he later applied to the creation of authoring techniques. In 1944, S. Vidzirkste together with his family went into exile to Germany, where he studied with the painter V. Tone in Merbeck. In 1950, he moved to the United States and settled in New York, where he studied painting at the Art Student League, which at that time was one of the American “abstract expressionist” epicentres. Philosophy lectures, passion for music and intense practice at the New York School affected S. Vidzirkste art taste, and he focused on abstraction.

After studying S. Vidzirkste spent two years in Spain, where he painted a lot and investigated art works of Spanish avant-garde painters. During this time, he collaborated with the exile magazine „Jaunā Gaita” (tr. “The New Course”). He has also worked as an audio-visual specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. It is possible that at the bank mathematically oriented S. Vidzirkste got familiarized with the principles of electronic computing equipment, which he integrated into painting art works. S. Vidzirkste’s creative maturity – 20th century 60s and 70s in America was the time when the post-war abstractionism developed, especially in the New York School, and S. Vidzirkste was one of the few Latvian artists whose paintings fitted in this school. S. Vīdzirkste’s abstract expressionism paintings are characterized by a monochrome colour gamma, black and white spaces, relief elevations and recesses, signs resembling Japanese calligraphy and expressive texture. S. Vidzirkste was one of the first painters who relied on cybernetics in developing his theoretical concepts. The composite foundation of the influenced paintings of the cybernetics is made up of shimmering cams of different sizes on a foggy background at regular intervals or at different distances. In 1963, he showed the public his square paintings with dotted cams, naming these works as “Cybernetic Canvases”. The abstract expressionism of S. Vidzirkste, which unites the rational structure of sensually pulsating substances, can be regarded as a fundamentally important contribution to the intellectual development of art in the 1960s.

Sigurds Vidzirkste participated in the exhibitions since 1955. His personal exhibitions in New York were held in 1963, 1964, 1968, and 1972. S. Vidzirkste lived and worked in the Latvian creative community – the so-called “Elles Ķēķis” in New York, Manhattan.

The artist died on July 17, 1974 in New York and was buried in Catskill Town Cemetery.

Relation to Daugavpils:

Born in Daugavpils