Jēkabs Kazaks (18 February 1895, in

Riga Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...

– 30 November 1920, in Riga) was a Latvian modernist painter.

Biography

Kazaks was born in a relatively meager surroundings and had to struggle to finish his high school education. He studied at the Riga Art School between 1913 and 1915 (under

Vilhelms Purvītis Vilhelms Purvītis (3 March 1872 – 14 January 1945) was a landscape painter and educator who founded the Latvian Academy of Art and was its rector from 1919 to 1934. Biography Vilhems Purvītis was born in Zaube Parish (now Cēsis Munici ...

and Roberts Tillbergs) and the

Penza Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

Art School during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, (1915-1917). Like many Latvian modernists, his formal artistic training and the choice of his most compelling subjects derived from his experience as a refugee during World War I. Kazaks style contained elements of

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

, West European Old Masters, modern French painters and early 20th century Latvian Modernism. He was also profoundly inspired by the series of paintings of his fellow countryman Jazeps Grosvalds, bringing to these themes his own intimist painter's sensitivity. He used his influences and interests to create a personal style characterised by expressiveness, simplicity, synthesis and distortion of forms. He was involved in the formation of the Expressionists' Group in 1919 and then the Riga Artists' Group as its theoretician and first chairman. Several of his major works portray the everyday life of refugees, he also painted portraits and self-portraits. His medium was conditional colour pattern in oil and water colour which he augmented with various graphic techniques (Indian ink, drawing, linocut, woodcut). Over 40 of his oil paintings as well as around 150 of his water colours and drawings are exhibited at the Latvian State Museum of Art. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Selected paintings

File:Kazaks Julija Sproga.jpg, Portrait of Julijas Sproga File:Kazaks Pie galda.jpg, At the Table File:Kazaks Peldetajas.jpg, Bathers File:Kazaks Begli-m.jpg,

Refugees A refugee, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is a person "forced to flee their own country and seek safety in another country. They are unable to return to their own country because of feared persecution as ...

File:Jēkabs Kazaks - Ladies at the Seaside - Google Art Project.jpg, Ladies at the Seaside (1920)

References

External links

1895 births 1920 deaths Artists from Riga People from Riga county 20th-century Latvian painters 20th-century Latvian male artists Latvian male painters {{Latvia-painter-stub