Ivars Heinrihsons

Ivars Heinrihsons (1945)

Ivars Heinrihsonsis one of the most vivid personalities in Latvian fine arts scene of this time – a painter, a brilliant representative of neo-expressionism in Latvian contemporary painting, and for many years a Professor of Painting at the Art Academy of Latvia.

Ivars Heinrihsons’ paintings open doors to one of the most quintessential creative expressions of the artist’s personality. For the artist, A  H O R S E signifies not only an aesthetic fascination with the form or a romantic notion, internally present in each of us. It is artist himself. Something that happens within oneself – conscious, intuitive, still unwitting.
Ivars Heinrihson's painting is a result of intense thinking revealed in imaginary form. The tangles and shafts of lines are expressions of the "I" that is unconscious but upon which everything rests. The painting becomes an experience and simultaneously understanding. In it we sense an apparent incompleteness of the drawing and composition in which a line is ready to shoot out again onto the canvas or paper.
Ivars Heinrihsons follows his unchanging themes - horses, the ballet, pianos, and men in the city. These are a system of images that personifies a person's ego (including Heinrihsons'), its primal nature, spirit and intellect. These are both thoughts and body and mind that contain all the opposites - struggles and anxieties (the horse). (Ilze Zeivate)

"The piano and horse - these are forms of expression of the inner "me".
The horse as natural expression, gesture and calligraphy. The horse is like a sign, the most appropriate for what is within me. For that which gives me aspiration.
The piano is a sign of culture, something fundamental. The piano makes you put yourself in order.
Classical ballet with its style and clarity of motifs leads one to aspire to the ideal, the fragile and the white."