Hilda Vīka (5 November 1897 – 14 February 1963), also known as Hilda Vīka-Eglīte, was a Latvian artist and writer. She made stylised watercolour and oil paintings of everyday life and dreamy visions. She wrote poetry, short stories and novels, illustrating her own works. Beginning in the 1930s, she incorporated

Latvian mythology Latvian mythology is the collection of myths that have emerged throughout the history of Latvia, sometimes being elaborated upon by successive generations, and at other times being rejected and replaced by other explanatory narratives. These myth ...

in her works. During the Soviet era she adapted to

socialist realism Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...

but was expelled from the artist union for most of the 1950s. She was married to the writer Viktors Eglītis.

Early life and education

Hildegarde Natālija Vīka, known as Hilda Vīka, was born in Riga on 5 November 1897. Her parents were the civil servant Otto Vīka and Elvīne Vīka (born Blosfelde). The father died when she was seven and she spent a part of her childhood in the countryside outside Dobele, where her mother's parents lived. She moved back to Riga when the mother remarried. Due to her mother's German ancestry, Vīka went to a German girls' school. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Vīka served as an assistant nurse, worked as an educator and maid in Russia, Poland and Lithuania, and completed a course in accounting. Back in Riga after the war she worked as a civil servant and a bank clerk until 1935. While working she took art classes at the () in 1920–1922 and studied under the painters Romans Suta (1921–1922), Augusts Zauers (1922–1925) and Uga Skulme (1925–1927).

Creative works

Vīka's paintings were first exhibited in 1927 and she held her first solo exhibition in 1933 at the Riga City Art Museum. In the 1930s and 1940s, she made multi-colour watercolour and oil paintings of scenes from everyday life and dreamy visions, typically with women as central figures. The paintings are stylised and inspired by geometrical ornaments. She followed the conventions of

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

, trying to combine restraint, graceful body language, repetition and vitality. She debuted as a poet in a literary calendar in 1924 before her first poetry collection was published in 1932. She published poetry collections, short story collections and novels in the 1930s and 1940s, providing her own illustrations for her books. From the early 1930s,

was important in Vīka's creative works, a result of her involvement in Latvian neopaganism. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she adapted to the

mandated by the Soviet Union. She was expelled from the in 1950 "for remnants of formalism in her oeuvre" but was readmitted in 1957.

Personal life

Vīka had several periods of illness. In 1928 she had a

tumor A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...

removed which left her unable to have children. In December 1929 she met Viktors Eglītis, a writer 20 years her senior, and they married on 20 December 1930. Like her husband she joined the

neopagan Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism and neopaganism, is a term for a religion or family of religions influenced by the various historical pre-Christian beliefs of pre-modern peoples in Europe and adjacent areas of North Afric ...

Dievturība movement and their wedding was officiated as a Dievturi ritual. She became the stepmother of her husband's sons Anšlavs and Vidvuds; the former became a successful writer in the 1930s and was influenced by her works and personality. Vīka's husband died in a Soviet prison in April 1945, having been arrested while attempting to preserve her paintings. In the postwar period, Vīka lived in poverty, spending winters painting in Riga and summers in Dobele. Her mother died in 1950 and Anšlavs went into exile, leaving Vidvuds as her only relative in the country. After three years of illness, she died in Riga on 14 February 1963.

Legacy

Lija Brīdaka compiled a collection of Vīka's works, ''Atmin̦ās, mākslā, rakstniecībā'' (), which was published in 1997. There is a street in Dobele named after Vīka. In 2021, the town announced a plan to create a cultural centre in her honour, located near the Dobele art school. More than 90 of her works are in the collection of Dobele's local history museum. To celebrate Vīka's 125th birthday in 2022, Latvijas Pasts released a

postage stamp block In philately, a block is a group of four or more un-separated stamps. Blocks are of interest not only because they are rarer than individual stamps, but they also preserve relative positions of stamps as they were originally printed, informatio ...

featuring her and her works as part of its series ''Outstanding Latvian Artists''.

Publications

Bibliography adapted from Literatura.lv.

Poetry

* ''Spožie ūdeņi'', 1932 * ''Mēnesnīca'', 1935 * ''Zelta briedis'', 1944

Prose

* ''Stāsti'', 1934 * ''Atsegtas dvēseles'', 1935 * ''Mūzu vaimanas'', 1937 * ''Lielā slāpe'', 1940 * ''Lielā taisnība'', 1942 * ''Laimīgā dziesma'', 1942 * ''Dievišķā vientiesība'', 1944 * ''Naudas vara'', 1944