Art in the Hotel

Colour forms the foundation of Grūbe’s painting, determining both the structure of the composition and the work’s overall expression. In still lifes and figurative compositions, objects are reduced to laconic, sign-like forms while retaining their symbolic significance. Bread, vessels, dolls, and the mother-and-child motif recur throughout his work. In the later period, recognizable objects increasingly give way to fields of colour, gesture, and light. This movement towards abstraction retains a connection with the Latvian painting tradition and its materially sensitive approach to colour, while increasingly emphasizing colour as an autonomous expressive element.

In Ieva Iltnere’s painting, figurative imagery appears within carefully constructed, aestheticized settings in which interiors, clothing, objects, and cultural references acquire particular significance. She frequently draws on motifs from art history, photography, and everyday visual culture, transforming them into personal, symbolically layered compositions. The human figure is often stylized and distanced, while space is conceived as a staged setting. Since the 1980s, Iltnere has consistently expanded the possibilities of figurative painting, combining precise execution with appropriation, artifice, and a multilayered system of imagery. This approach also reflects the shift towards a more conceptually oriented visual language in Latvian painting during the 1980s.