Kārlis Cemiņš – mākslinieks un pedagogs

Abstract

Kārlis Celmiņš (1894–1973) is one of the less famous Latvian artists. He was born in Cēsis as the fifth, the last child in his family, the only son. He received an artistic education at Stroganov School of Arts in Moscow. Still studying at this school, Celmiņš took part in the IV Exhibition of Latvian Art in Riga in 1914. After he had finished school, he was drafted into the Russian Empire’s army, where he was assigned a painter decorator of his regiment. Celmiņš returned to Latvia in 1918. After working as a teacher of drawing in Madona for two years, he moved to Jelgava. There he worked as a teacher of arts in Jelgava Classic Gymnasium. During the time of independent Latvia, Celmiņš actively took part in Jelgava’s artistic life. He regularly displayed his works at society’s “Zaļā Vārna” and other exhibitions and organized exhibitions himself together with students of the gymnasium. Celmiņš had many-sided artistic interests. He was not only painting and drawing but also doing graphics, applied arts, making silver jewelry, and writing poems in his leisure time. The monument devoted to the Latvian soldiers who fell in action in 1916–1917 was made after the artist’s project. Almost all works of the master were destroyed in the ruins of Jelgava during the war in 1944. Celmiņš felt very sorry about this loss. The artist and his wife and children moved to Dundaga after Jelgava was destroyed, but when the war was over, they settled in Tukums. There Celmiņš worked in a ceramics workshop as a decorator of ready-made plates and dishes. In 1946 the artist was invited to work at the School of Applied Arts in Liepāja. The rest of his life Celmiņš spent in this city. The artist painted portraits, landscapes, still-lifes, and decorative compositions with plants, flowers, and the sea all his creative life. He did his works with oil, watercolours, colour chalks, and pencil. The life of the free-thinking artist was not easy during the Soviet occupation. Many people did not understand the art of Celmiņš. At the end of his life, the master organised several personal exhibitions in Liepāja, Jelgava, Cēsis. Many interesting paintings of flowers done with watercolours, pastel, and colour oil chalks were displayed in his last exhibition, “Flowers” in 1973. Those were the paintings of gladioli, irises, calla lilies, and other flowers made during the last years of his life. Celmiņš died in Liepāja on 16 October 1973, leaving a wide range of works of his individual, unique style.