Signet Bank supports the LNMA exhibition “Wandering the Streets: Urban Visions of Latvian Modernists”

From January 31 to July 26, the Latvian National Museum of Art (LNMA) will host the exhibition “Wandering the Streets: Urban Visions of Latvian Modernists,” which focuses on one of the most fascinating cultural phenomena – the role of the city as a source of creative inspiration in Latvian modernist art and literature.

The exhibition invites visitors to take a contemporary stroll through three metropolises – Riga, Berlin, and Paris – as seen by Latvian writers and artists at the beginning of the 20th century. They were flâneurs and flâneuses – urban observers who captured the rhythm of modern life in texts and images: street noise, traffic, shop windows, posters, architecture, and social change. This visually and conceptually multi-layered exhibition offers both classic and rarely seen works of art, literary texts, original prints, photographs, and video materials.

Depictions of urban environments range from Ludolfs Liberts’ brightly lit night scenes of Paris, Jānis Tīdemanis’ scenes of city crowds, and Ādolfs Zārdiņš’ fantasies to the harsh world of Riga’s working class, the dreamlike world of street urchins and vagabonds in the poetry of Aleksandrs Čaks and Austra Skujiņa, the bitter graphics of Kārlis Padegs, and the surreal description of the Daugava market in the notes of Valter Benjamin. The combination of literature and art in the exhibition highlights the social and cultural changes of the era, revealing how Latvian modernists reflected and interpreted the impressions and dynamics of the changing urban environment.

We are delighted to support the work of the LNMA, which makes contemporary and multi-layered cultural experiences accessible to a wider audience. This exhibition speaks to us as city dwellers and contemporaries – it reveals the city as a living, changing and complex image. As Andrejs Kurcijs wrote: ‘The barbarian entered the city and became a poet’ – this exhibition also encourages us to see more – both the past and ourselves,

says Ineta Done, member of the board of Signet Bank.

Māra Lāce, director of the Latvian National Museum of Art, says of the exhibition and Signet Bank’s support:

The exhibition “Wandering the Streets: Urban Visions of Latvian Modernists” can be described as a reflection of the 20th century period when the city, as depicted by artists of the 1920s and 1930s, enters works of art as a living being  – restless, polyphonic  and poetic. Thanks to Signet Bank, which, sensing the content and meaning of flâneurism in a unified view of visual art and poetry, has transformed the flow of urban life into an aesthetic experience and succumbed to the charm of support.

We have been building our corporate art collection since 2015, and it is only natural that we continue our friendship with the LNMA, which has lasted for more than four years. Art is close to our hearts – it inspires us and is an integral part of our identity as a local bank with a broad outlook.

Art inspires, Signet Bank supports!

More about the exhibition: www.lmmm.lv