Anita Meldere “EXPRESSIONS. ABSTRACT PAINTING”.

Anita Meldere “EXPRESSIONS. ABSTRACT PAINTING”.

Anita Meldere was born on May 18, 1949. She received professional education at Janis Rozentals Riga Art High school (graduation work “Wood Sawyers”, advisor Jānis Osis, senior) and at the Art Academy of Latvia (graduation work “In the Sun and Wind”, scientific advisors professors Edgars Iltners and Edgars Kalniņš).

The artist works in oil, watercolour and acrylic techniques, as well as in lithography. Apart from it, she has also painted on ceramics and silk during the international plein-air sessions for art teachers in Zvārtava, initiated by the Ceramics department of the Art Academy of Latvia.

Anita Meldere has been a member of the Artists’ Union of Latvia since 1973. She is a Master in Arts (her Master’s work “Atmospherism as the quality of artistic expression in Latvian painting of the 1980s and 1990s”, 1993), an associate professor and since 2007 the Head of the Fine Arts Department at Riga Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. From 1995 to 2009 she taught colour theory at the Art Academy of Latvia, Department of Functional Design.

The artist has been participating in exhibitions since 1972. She has had about 50 solo exhibitions in Latvia and abroad: Germany, Canada, Belgium and Norway. She has regularly participated in group exhibitions in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, France, United States, Germany, Japan and other countries. Anita Meldere’s paintings can be seen in the museums and art collections in Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Russia, Japan, as well as in private collections in Latvia, Russia, USA, France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, etc. The artist’s works have been reproduced in significant albums, books and periodicals published in Latvia and abroad.

Several periods can be distinguished in the artist’s creative work.

After graduation, encouraged by her scientific advisor and then dominating professional standards, she tried her hand at figurative painting, yet she won recognition in Latvian painting with her still lifes, portraits and nudes.

In the mid-1980s Anita Meldere started taking interest in watercolour and is still faithful to it. Watercolour enriched her palette with new means of expression as well as the transparency and lightness that are characteristic of watercolour.

In the early 1990s the artist turned to abstract painting constantly developing this genre in her work.

In 2005, in Riga Anita Meldere arranged a small exhibition in the gallery of Ivonna Veiherte, and gave it the title “Spectrum and Horizon”. This exhibition revealed the artist’s acquired experience in the emotional interaction of art and pedagogy.

The emotional capacity and value of colour spectrum, as well as the philosophical concept of horizon and the element of landscape intertwine the dominant themes of her abstract painting through which it is possible to live through the victories and dramas of life.

“I am a woman who paints”- the artist Anita Meldere says about herself, and this is also what others say about her, defining her style as brilliant and her art as radiant and life loving.

Anita Meldere has been drawing and painting since her childhood, and all her life has been connected with art, yet her art has been constantly changing.

In the early abstractions she focussed mostly on the power of colour. They suggest emotionally capacious minimalism of expression with a strong expressivity of painting. Moreover, not only Meldere’s paintings are expressive, so are their titles. They reveal the whole range of life perception from romantic yearning to the emptiness of unfulfilled expectations. No doubt that Anita Meldere has achieved her utmost in art: her skilful expressive strokes reveal the soul’s substance encoded in colours and can evoke romantic joy of living in the depiction of spring.

In 2005, after the death of her son dark colours and sombre motifs appeared in Anita’s painting. The artist tried to get over her tragedy by painting scenes similar to landscapes by transforming her feelings, talking to the sea, listening to the rustling wind, looking into the sky and watching the way of clouds, their coming,and inexorable going away and endless visions of images, thus allowing the mind to realize the concept of infinity … finding the faith that everything has already happened once, that it is just here next to us, that it will go on …

At present she finds strength and desire to live and work in her grandchildren, her job at the University and opportunity to relax and draw inspiration in her summer house.

Characterising her work of the recent years, Anita Meldere says: “Now I am again interested in the means of expression close to realism, yet the knowledge acquired from abstraction and my past experience are my fortune. I believe and hope that what I have done and am doing will be understood and evaluated”.