Exhibition Overview

Curated by Eleanor Heartney and Ieva Kalnina.

Working quietly and in near obscurity during the dark days of the Latvian Soviet period, artist Visvaldis Ziedins amassed a remarkable body of over 3,000 works. This survey brings his witty assemblages, sculptures, collages and paintings to American audiences for the first time. These works reveal a vivid imagination unfettered by material and political pressures and bear comparison to contemporaneous explorations by such better known avant gardists as Pablo Picasso, John Cage, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Antoni Tàpies and Arman.

This exhibition is part of Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union public diplomacy and culture program. Special thanks to the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia and the Latvian Institute for Contemporary Arts for their support.

Video: See Zienins Exhibition Trailer.