Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins ( Latvian Vija Celmina; born October 25, 1938 in Riga, Latvia) is an American illustrator, painter and graphic artist of Latvian origin.
Life and work
Celmins family fled in 1945 from the troops of the Red Army to Germany. In 1948 she moved with her parents to Indianapolis in the United States. She studied art at the Herron School of Art and Design Indiana University (BFA 1962) in Indianapolis. From 1962 to 1980 she lived in Venice, California. She referred in 1964 a generous studio on the Pacific and began to photograph the sea, the photos she used as templates for numerous drawings and paintings. In the same year her realistic paintings with hand gun was (oil on canvas). In 1965 she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, their master ( MFA). Today she lives mostly in New York City.
Celmins is considered alongside Audrey Flack as the most important female member of the hyper-realistic flow, and as one of the most important living North American artists ever. In contrast to that colleague their color palette is almost exclusively black-gray- white, which she has brought over the decades to the highest championship in the nuances of light and shadow. Their works are marked by a certain Baltic melancholy, even tragic. In their nostalgia and their consciousness of exile Vija Celmins is in a sense " the " Jonas Mekas in their field.
2010 Celmins was awarded the Roswitha Haftman price. In 1997 she was MacArthur Fellow.