Timur Thomson, the director of the concert hall, reminded that the world-famous artist was in Liepaja in the summer of 1913, but at that time he was called Markus Rotkovičs and he was ten years old. He stayed in the city with his family for a few weeks to prepare for a boat trip to New York. The spirit of Mark Rothko has returned to us in almost a hundred and ten years. This does not mean that we can see his paintings here, but the Mark Rothko Art Center has brought a wonderful collection, ”he noted.
As both Liepāja and Daugavpils are on their way to the status of the European Capital of Culture in the second round of the competition, it is a pleasure to cooperate in a joint art project between the two cities.
The chairman of the council Gunārs Ansiņš named the Rothko Center an inspiration for Liepāja. Two months ago, the people of Liepaja visited Daugavpils.
“Also at the Rothko Art Center, which is why we look at Daugavpils residents with a kind of white envy. The people of Liepāja had seen the great exhibitions, and I thought to myself – how would you like the Rothko center to be in Liepāja, ”he said.
The Rothko Center currently has a collection of more than 2,000 works of art. Its mission is not only to preserve the collection, but also to regularly exhibit it both in the art center and in other cultural and artistic spaces in Latvia and abroad.
“Every time we take our projects outside – with friends and partners, it is important that they are unique and different from others, thus creating an artist’s dialogue with the people of the specific environment, cultural space who enjoy art there, also creating a wonderful bridge through these art works and their authors back to the Rothko Center, ”said Čačka.
The center has no casual collaboration with artists, the collection is purposeful, he said. The Art Center is open to various authors, as well as artists participating in symposia organized by the center and selected by an international jury.
“Each exhibition in the collection of the Rothko Art Center is unique in that it is designed for a specific exhibition space,” said Zane Melāne, the main custodian of the collection. ”When thinking about Liepāja, the sea, the horizon, the lines that are in the wonderful architecture of the concert hall and your symbolism immediately come to mind. So we looked for lines in our collection. We invite you to look for them not only in the direct methods of the language of art, but also to try to see the spiritual dimensions that each artist has drawn into their works, they are kinship ties, parallels, boundaries. ”
The exhibition “Lines” will be open until January 28, 2022.
