Works from the Drawing and Painting Studio of Rīga People's College (1928-1934)

Museum of Romans Suta and Aleksandra Beļcova
57a Elizabetes Street, Apt. 26
(enter from the yard, 5th floor)

Between the two world wars, one of the most important places for the education of young artists alongside the Latvian Academy of Art was the Drawing Studio that was established in 1923 by the Rīga People’s College (RTA) with the support of the Social Democratic Party. The aim was to train working people for artistic work. Directors of the studio included Latvian artists such as Ludolfs Liberts, Uga Skulme and Sigismunds Vidbergs. The most active period in its life, however, occurred after 1928, when Romans Suta took over.

During Suta’s tenure, the educational process was made more targeted and well-planned. He established a teaching programme for three courses, although the amount of time that each student spent at the studio depended on his or her talent, working abilities and the amount of time dedicated to studies. Ads from the studio show that people were taught not just drawing and painting, but also sculpture, handicrafts and technical drawing. Suta himself taught drawing and painting. In order to help students to learn about the various specific aspects of various forms of art to a greater degree, he brought in other artists who were more familiar with the concrete issues than Suta himself was. When it came to the specifics of graphic art, Suta asked colleagues from the Rīga Association of Graphic Artists to come and help – Sigismunds Vidbergs taught graphic design techniques, Izaks Frīdlenders helped students to learn about etching, Nikolajs Puzirevskis taught wood carving, Konrāds Ubāns taught painting to a group of Sundays, and sculptor Emīls Melderis and architecture teacher Jurijs Rikovskis, among others, were also involved.

The emphasis during Suta’s classes was on composition, studies of live models, and analysis and evaluation of masterpieces of art from the past. From the first day, students were required to work hard on drawing, painting and art history, as well as engage in independent work – work which the master always analysed with great care. The evaluation of homework was made all the more interesting by Romans Suta’s juicy language. The artists Voldemārs Herberts Krišs Sils remember it so well that in an article about their former teacher they used a phrase from the master for its title, albeit in a rather expansive form. Suta’s judgment: If there are figures, then they must be crippled, stylised or deformed. They must be expressively ‘alive,’ even though they have involved just a few brushstrokes. Suta loved to call the latter ones ‘silly figures.’ The opposite to ‘silly figures’ was ‘stiff bandits’ – figures with stiff stylisation in the early graphic art of students at the studio.

Romans Suta himself had this to say about the teaching of art at the Drawing and Painting Studio of the RTA: The process of drawing starts at the level of accidental improvisation, and constructive and formal methods turns it into controllable work. We have rejected the theory of light and shadow in favour of line and form. [..] This is a moral and artistic way of raising young working people along an unordinary road.  It is an approach toward facts of art from the perspective of ideological, formal and technical searches. [..] Art not just for art’s sake. Art for life, which is why the students are familiar with methods and techniques in practical work – wood engravings, posters, decorations, window dressings, graphic art. While at the studio and later on in life, emerging artists used their skills in real life to design magazines and exhibition catalogues and to illustrate books (Ādolfs Girdvoins, Kārlis Bušs, Augusts Pupa, Kārlis Meija, etc.), to produce political or cultural posters (Ernests Kālis, Jānis Šneiders, Solomons Gūtmanis, etc.), to design furniture (Arvīds Iraids), to dress shop windows (Jānis Šneiders), to design display cases (Estere Blīdena, Pauls Šterns), and to do set design (Ernests Kālis, Vilis Ciesnieks, etc.). Sadly, most of the work is gone apart from poor-quality press photographs or written descriptions.

Students followed the principle of art for life in selecting subjects for their easel paintings, as well. They usually used social motifs related to the everyday and working lives of workers and the poor. These make up the majority of the exhibition. One composition in the exhibition, Art for Art’s Sake, is by Samuils Haskins, and he very directly expressed the desire to stay close to real life in art, also griping about artists who did not do so. Art for Art’s Sake shows an artist who is completely departed from reality and is perched on the edge of a cloud.

It soon became clear that the pedagogic work of Romans Suta was very successful, as seen in an exhibition staged in honour of the 10^th anniversary of the Rīga People’s College, in exhibitions staged by the studio itself and by the Zaļā Vārna (Green Crow) association of artists, and elsewhere. The work done by drawing and painting students received critical praise, with one critic writing that the achievement of students in terms of formal technique and artistic discipline is incomparably superior to that of students in the relevant years of study at the Academy [of Art]. Because the main focus in the process was on various graphic techniques (linocuts, xylography, etc.), among those who were graduated from the studio were well known graphic artists such as Oļģerts Ābelīte, Aleksandrs Junkers, Jānis Plēpis, Pauls Šterns and others. Indeed, art historians mostly look at the educational institution in the context of graphic art.

The Rīga People’s College was shut down after the coup staged by Kārlis Ulmanis in 1934, but some of the students continued to train under Romans Suta privately.

The exhibition Art Not Just for Art’s Sake. Art for Life contains artworks from the Latvian National Museum of Art and from private collections. These are graphics produced by students at the Drawing and Painting Studio of the Rīga People’s College, as well as posters and cases of scanned photographs and applied graphics artworks.

Exhibition curator Baiba Vanaga

LNMM_SarMuz_RTA_220112.doc

SBM_RTA_LNMM_2011.doc