Džemma Skulme
Džemma Skulme, born 20 September 1925 in Riga. Džemma Skulme played an invaluable part in the development of Latvian art and in public life in the second half of the twentieth century; she was one of the most significant and most active shapers of Latvian cultural life in the Soviet period. The artist comes from the notable Skulme family, makers of Latvian classical modernism, being the daughter of the painter and stage designer Oto Skulme and the sculptor Marta Skulme
Džemma Skulme graduated from the Department of Monumental Painting of the Art Academy of Latvia (1949) and from the postgraduate programme of the Ilya Repin State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad (now St Petersburg; 1955). She took part in exhibitions regularly and made solo exhibitions. She led the Artists' Union of Latvia, giving deliberate support to modern art and encouraging the flourishing of the Art Days. She contributed to the course of the Awakening in Latvia and, as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and a People's Deputy, took an active part in the democratic processes of Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost. In 1995 she was awarded the Order of the Three Stars and in 2019 the Purvītis Prize for lifetime achievement.
Džemma Skulme died on 9 November 2019.
Her works are in the collection of the Museum of the Artists' Union of Latvia, in the holdings of the Latvian National Museum of Art, in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow (Russia), in the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University (USA) and in private collections in Latvia and abroad.
The artist's exhibitions
DŽEMMA'S WATERCOLOURS
16.02.2023 - 23.03.2023