The exhibition marking the centennial of Raimonds Staprāns highlights works never before seen in Latvia and weaves a rich narrative of the master’s creative legacy, from his very earliest works in the 1950s right up to his final works, painted in the 21st century, allowing viewers to trace how Staprāns’ unique painting style evolved over the course of 70 years. His art flourished during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism. No matter how abstractly Staprāns tried to paint, he was always drawn to figurative landscape or still-life motifs, and it was with these that the artist remained, becoming part of the Bay Area Painting Movement.
From Abstract Expressionism, Staprāns learned the "architecture" of painting - how a painting is constructed. "A painting must be able to ‘stand’ like a building," said the artist. Staprāns’ painting is enigmatic; it stands out for its strictly architectural composition and color scheme, taken to an extreme that is filled with inner tension. This is an intellectual language of painting - Staprāns does not explain the world, but uses precise visual means to create an emotionally and aesthetically rich and tense space of silence. Each of Staprāns’ paintings is like a polished diamond, created through a long, slow process.
At the end of World War II, Raimonds Staprāns (1926-2026), then eighteen years old, fled with his family to Germany. As early as 1947, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in Salem, Oregon. In 1948, Staprāns began studying painting and drama at the University of Washington in Seattle, earning a bachelor’s degree (1948-1952), and he completed his master’s thesis in art at the University of California, Berkeley (1952-1954). He later made San Francisco his home, where he pursued his career as an artist and playwright.