MARUTA RAUDE
MAXIMALISM FOREVER
Maruta Raude’s solo exhibition ALWAYS ALL OUT is a retrospective with select items from the artist’s previous shows “…and then they went out to the river…”, “Perfect place for you”, “First day or Monday”, “Four mermaids in a red sea” and “Totems” with the addition of assorted pieces she created during the international ceramic art symposium “Ceramic Laboratory” in Daugavpils.
Maruta’s works can be handpicked and rearranged like glass beads – and they will tell a new story. Always. Because the artist went all out to create them in her ongoing pursuit of order, meaning and ideas that radiate into the world.
Artwork displayed in this exhibition was created in different techniques and colour schemes with the common thread of Maruta always going all out to chase unity between imagery and form. The images feature codes, which function like vowels in Maruta’s creative alphabet – the garden, the flowers and the birds, the stairs, tables and chairs. A chair that indicates (or points towards) a specific place – a chair for high sitting. On the same plane as the viewership and the audience. It is Maruta’s theatre of imagery. Maximalism forever.
Artist Maruta Raude was born on 7 October 1965 in Varakļāni in the family of Veronika and Jānis Skuruļi as the younger of two siblings. She attended Viļāni Secondary School, where she excelled in mathematics, and took piano and accordion lessons in Viļāni Music School for Children.
Maruta Raude graduated from Rēzekne Secondary School of Art and Design in 1985 and was accepted into the Art Academy of Latvia in 1986. In 1992, she graduated from the Department of Graphic Art with a graduation project of hand-painted porcelain plates “Worlds of my friends – worlds for my friends”. In 2000, Maruta earned a master’s degree at the Art Academy of Latvia with a thesis “In search of the lost garden or History of garden and its symbolic elements – a study in the context of my creative work”. The artist participated in exhibitions since 1991. In 1998, she became a member of Latvian Artists’ Union.
Maruta Raude had more than 20 solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions and symposia in Latvia and abroad, in countries such as Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Turkey and Australia. She was a longstanding participant of international porcelain painting symposia held at the creative branch of Latvian Artists’ Union in Zvārtava Manor.
The artist worked in different techniques, predominantly with porcelain shaping and painting. Thematically, her work delves into the relationship between humans and nature. She also worked as a graphic artist in the etching technique.
Maruta Raude’s painted teapots have been featured in several books by Lark Books publishing group, such as “500 Teapots”, “Prints on Clay” and “500 Ceramic Sculptures”. Her painted plates have been mentioned in the book “Painted Clay” by British author Paul Scott, her painting techniques described in the books “The Ceramics Surface” and “Ceramic Narratives” by Canadian author Matthias Ostermann.
Maruta’s work is held in the collections of Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvian Artists’ Union Museum, Latvian National Museum of Art, Powerhouse Museum in Sydney (Australia) and Mersina New Art Museum (Turkey) as well as in private collections in Latvia, Russia, Sweden, England, France, the USA and Hong Kong.
Her final decade was spent in Mārupe in a self-planned and furnished cottage with a studio. Maruta was actively engaged in community life through educational events for schoolchildren and joint projects with local businesses. So many plans. She also never forget her birthplace – organised several exhibitions in Viļāni local history museum and helped prepare Pļuskova castle mound for the summer season.
All of that was cut short by a cruel and merciless disease.
Maruta Raude’s legacy remains in the care of her husband Alf and son Jānis Mārtiņš.
Her final resting place is the old cemetery of Ikšķile.
Alfs Raudis
