Six Exhibitions and the International Martinsons Award: Rothko Museum Announces Ambitious Autumn Lineup
At 4 p.m. on Friday, 5 September, the Rothko Museum will unveil its autumn season with six impressive exhibitions that show the richness and vitality of contemporary artistic practice. From the international Martinsons Award and its celebration of excellence in ceramics, to intimate, poetic explorations of memory, time, and nature, the season spans mediums, voices, and visions, promising an immersive encounter with creativity, imagination, and profound artistic expression.
Martinsons Award 2025
The autumn season opens with Martinsons Award, the flagship exhibition of the fifth Latvia Ceramics Biennale, which will unfold through autumn and into winter across venues in Daugavpils, Cēsis, and Liepāja. For the Martinsons Award 2025 at the Rothko Museum, an international panel of experts selected eighty works by artists from thirty countries, including twenty-three Latvians, from an incredible nine hundred and forty-one submissions. On the exhibition’s opening night, the jury will announce the winners, who will share a twenty-thousand-euro prize fund.
Co-curators Aivars Baranovskis and Valentīns Petjko emphasise the exhibition’s scale and breadth: from technically sophisticated pieces with matching conceptual depth to more intuitive, experimental works where clay itself shapes form and rhythm, revealing the poetic dialogue between material and maker. Under the Biennale theme, “From Stardust to Lush Sprouts”, the show reflects on cosmic origins and transformation, highlighting how clay, one of humanity’s oldest materials, continues to inspire contemporary creativity.
Milena Pirštelienė. Matchstick in the Sand
Lithuanian artist Milena Pirštelienė, international Gold Prize winner at the previous Biennale, presents a lyrical meditation on memory, attention, and the often overlooked details of daily life. Focusing on the small and seemingly unimportant – a shadow, a fragment of a street, a match in the sand – she asks: “Do we ever pause before the ‘insignificant’?”
In her hands, ceramics becomes a medium of quiet reflection, subtly revealing how the tiniest of objects can carry memory, emotion, and unexpected depth. The show invites the viewer to slow down, look closely, and rediscover the poetry in the everyday.
Sanita Ābelīte. Creatures
Latvian ceramicist Sanita Ābelīte, national Gold Prize winner at the Martinsons Award 2023, brings imagination to life in “Creatures”, an enchanting world of beings both real and fantastical. From animals of the forest, field, and sky to figures drawn from history and myth, Ābelīte’s creative touch transforms ideas into tangible, expressive forms that feel alive.
Created specifically for this exhibition, the ensemble of characters forms a cohesive, multi-layered world, inviting viewers to step inside and experience the artist’s nuanced vision, where craftsmanship and creativity converge and every form sparks curiosity and reflection.
Lost for words. Poland’s contemporary ceramics
“Lost for Words” presents contemporary ceramics from Poland, guest country of the 5th Latvia Ceramics Biennale. The exhibition’s title, drawn from the Polish expression brak słów, reflects both being speechless in awe and struggling to articulate profound emotion when words alone cannot express the scope of feeling.
Through striking forms, intriguing textures, and symbolic gestures, the twenty-three featured artists shape clay into a universal language, inviting viewers to interpret and connect with the intangible and thus discover resonance and meaning beyond words.
Sandra Strēle. The Night Before
Latvian artist Sandra Strēle presents “The Night Before”, an intimate yet expansive meditation on new motherhood and the fluid boundaries between humanity and nature. Through painting, Strēle explores the ebb and flow of life, where water becomes both witness and agent, preserving, transforming, and revealing connections between the personal and the ecological.
Drawing on hydrofeminist thought, the exhibition examines liminal thresholds of bodies, ideas, and actions while reflecting on ecological change and the fragile, cyclical nature of existence. Strēle’s large-scale series, unfolding in a dynamic continuum she calls seriality, invites viewers to encounter familiar images re-imagined, generating ever-new meanings and resonances.
Uģis Auziņš. Improvised
Latvian painter Uģis Auziņš presents “Improvised”, a celebration of nature’s fleeting moments and ever-changing rhythms. Drawing profusely from the landscape of his birthplace, Auziņš transforms the subtle shifts of light, season, and colour into canvases that engage both the senses and the imagination.
A lifelong observer and sensitive interpreter of the natural world, Auziņš captures the ephemeral beauty of the sky, foliage, and wind, creating works that are at once emotional, reflective, and deeply attuned to the physical world around us.
Exhibition Dates and Opening Night
The Rothko Museum’s autumn season runs from 5 September to 23 November 2025. Two exhibitions – “Martinsons Award 2025” and “Matchstick in the Sand” by Milena Pirštelienė – will extend into the winter season and conclude on 1 February 2026.
Admission is free on opening night.
The Rothko Museum’s autumn exhibition season was prepared in partnership with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics and the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw, with valued support from the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Daugavpils City Council, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, Embassy of Poland in Rīga, “Format”, “Szkło i Ceramika”, and “Caparol”.
Publicity images:
Rothko Museum. Photo by Didzis Grodzs.
Martinsons Award 2025. Logo.
Milena Pirštelienė. “Matchstick in the Sand”. White clay, pigment drawing, overglaze paint, glaze, 1020 °C, electric firing. 2025.
Sanita Ābelīte. “Creatures”. Ceramics. Varied sizes. 2025.
Karina Marusińska. “Self-Destruction”. Ceramics, synthetic materials, earth, ash, mixed media. Diameter 75 cm. 2023. Photo by Paweł Góral.
Sandra Strēle. “Triumphal Arch”. Water-based paint and acrylic markers on canvas. 80 x 40 cm (detail). 2025.
Uģis Auziņš. “March”. Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2024
