Black-and-white stylized illustration of several musicians indoors, including a violinist and double bassist, rendered in a bold Art Deco graphic style.

The Graphic Art Collection (18th Century – First half of the 20th Century)

The Graphic Art Collection (18th Century – First half of the 20th Century), comprising more than 8000 works, primarily features works by Latvian artists as well as represents a diverse range of compositions by Baltic German, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian, and Jewish artists active in the Baltic region. The collection was established in 1945 through the merger of the holdings of the former Latvian State Museum of Art (1920-1941) and the Riga City Museum of Art (1905-1941). The latter had already been augmented in 1940 and 1941 by works transferred from the Courland Provincial Museum and the Society for the Promotion of Latvian Art. Notable major donations include: drawings and sketchbooks by Arturs Baumanis (1867-1904) in 1909; photomontages, drawings, and watercolours by Gustavs Klucis (1895-1938) in 1964; and an extensive selection of graphic works by a wide array of authors from the personal collection of artist Kārlis Sūniņš (1907-1979) in 1991.

The black-and-white composition depicts a stylized Nativity scene with Mary and the infant in a manger, surrounded by musicians, people, and donkeys.

The expressive black-and-white drawing shows a distorted close-up of a human face with a pronounced grin and dark dripping lines running across it.

In the detailed black-and-white composition, a woman sits in a decorative interior trying on a shoe, surrounded by patterned fabrics, curtains, and furniture.

The delicate black-and-white graphic depicts a winter landscape with bare trees and bushes in a snowy field, rendered using a stippling technique.

The black-and-white graphic depicts the atmosphere of a café or concert hall with musicians, listeners, and people engaged in conversation, rendered in an expressive Art Deco style.

The delicate drawing depicts a young woman with braided hair carefully sewing or embroidering patterned fabric, creating a calm and intimate domestic scene.

The expressive black-and-white ink drawing depicts a winter rural scene with a horse harnessed to a sleigh, figures in the snow, and an animal lying in a sled, rendered with dynamic lines and strong contrasts.

The monumental black-and-white composition depicts a symbolic scene of birth and destiny, with mythological female figures above a peasant family and a newborn child in a nocturnal setting beneath the moon and a star.

The decorative black-and-white drawing depicts a stylized rural scene with birch trees, birds, and people working in nature, rendered through rhythmic lines and ornamental forms.

The finely rendered portrait drawing depicts a young woman with smoothly arranged hair and a calm, serious gaze, executed in an academic realist style.

The detailed black-and-white engraving features a central portrait of the writer Rudolf von Altstern, surrounded by various theatrical and everyday figure scenes accompanied by explanatory captions in German.

The finely executed black-and-white graphic depicts a reclining female nude with an expressive gaze and decoratively modeled body, created in a surreal and erotically symbolic mood.

The collection primarily preserves fine art graphics, as well as posters, set and costume designs for the theatre, book illustrations, and ex-libris, supplemented by art albums and artist sketchbooks. The collection is distinguished by a high proportion of unique works on paper created using original techniques, accounting for three-quarters of the collection from this period. Drawing techniques (graphite, charcoal, ink, sanguine, and sepia) are most extensively represented. However, the compositions of Gustavs Klucis, executed using the photomontage method, are of international renown. Within the field of printmaking, the most numerically significant are the works in etching, woodcut, wood engraving, linocut, and lithography. The collection also highlights the contributions of women artists dating back to the mid-19^th century.

In the permanent display of the Latvian National Museum of Art, alongside National Romanticist and Symbolist compositions, particular emphasis is placed on the prolific output of Classical Modernist artists (Jāzeps Grosvalds, Jēkabs Kazaks, Romans Suta, Niklāvs Strunke, Sigismunds Vidbergs, Kārlis Padegs, and Hilda Vīka) with a focus on their formal experimentation in drawing techniques.