Jazeps Grosvalds (1891-1920)

Aliases: Iosif Fedorovič Grosval'd; Jazep Fedorovič Grosval'd; Jāzeps Grosvalds

Professions: Painter

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Jazeps Grosvalds Biography

(b Riga, 24 April 1891; d Paris, 1 Feb 1920). Latvian painter, printmaker and diplomat. Raised in a family of patriots, he was naturally suited to become the founder and chief proponent of a modern national style in Latvian painting. His awareness of uniquely Latvian cultural traits grew apace with his dissatisfaction with the training he received from 1909 to 1914 in the studios of Simon Hollósy in Munich and Hermen-Anglada Camarasa, Charles Guérin and Kees van Dongen in Paris; concomitantly, Latvia’s struggle for independence during World War I galvanized his devotion to nationalist art, and he was a member of both the Ekspresionisti and the RIGA ARTISTS’ GROUP. For younger colleagues working in Riga before the War, Grosvalds was a conduit of information about French and German modernism, though much of it was cautionary. His period of military service inspired him to produce Refugee and Riflemen , an influential series of paintings and prints that demonstrated his preference for classical monumentality and communicated the epic forbearance of the Latvian peasantry and infantry in exile and in battle. As he had intended, the painting the Old Refugee (1917; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.) became a national icon. Its solemnity, integrity of form, absence of decoration and earthen palette is typical of his work, and such characteristics would later endear him to the Purists, particularly Amédée Ozenfant. Despite the sobriety of his pictorial means, Grosvalds was a deeply romantic painter, favouring vignettes filled with great pathos and treasuring even the most sombre colours as extractions from the Latvian landscape. His empathy for cultural singularities and mood resulted in his lyrical watercolour series Persijas ainas (Persian tableaux; from 1918; e.g. Stockholm, Nmus.; Karlstad, Värmlands Mus.), conceived while serving with a British Army expedition in Iraq and acclaimed by Ozenfant as ‘ "psychogeographic" landscape’. Shortly after completing this series, Grosvalds died in Paris while serving as a diplomat, but his circumspection and restraint continued to affect the timbre of modernism in Latvia.

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