The exhibition focuses on the reality of art during the occupation of Latvia, between Soviet dictatorship and non-committal art, between cooperation and opposition, between conformism and nonconformism.
The life and creative work of painter and art theorist Ojārs Ābols (1922–1983) passed during the occupation of Latvia and was inevitably tied to political certainties. Ābols was an erudite intellectual, a long-time board member of the Artists Union and head of the painters' section (1973–1981), he gave passionate speeches about art and believed that art has an important role in the development of civilisation. In his works he dealt with the current issues of his time. Ābols' activism, the development and transformation of his views on art is a story about a young man obsessed with communist ideals changing and becoming an important practitioner and theoretician of modernist art and even an instigator of conceptualist art in Latvia. Tracing Ābols' biography and shifts in his art, the exhibition also looks back at Latvia's complex history.