HELENA HEINRIHSONE

"I love you. Tribute to Alex Katz"

Helena Heinrihsone’s new series of paintings “I love you” is a tribute to the American artist Alex Katz. Six paintings look at the puzzlement of feelings, naiveté and directness. This romanticized reality is portrayed by using the ideals of the conventional beauty.

The idea is inspired by young people – couples in love in a (mood) charactering environment – on the background of the world's most significant architectural sites and landscapes. The Taj Mahal in India, the rocky ocean coast in Portugal, an old cemetery in Ireland and the first snow.

A romantic vision, which conscious banality is confined by irony.

Snow. 2016, oil on canvas, 120x150 cm

Helena Heinrihsone appeared in the Latvian art scene in the 1970s. Already then and among her own generation too, her works stood out with their daring – too exposed, too daring, too lively in colours, too expressive.
Her works are in public collections: the Latvian National Museum of Art (Riga, Latvia), Artists’ Union of  Latvia Art Collection (Riga, Latvia), State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Jane Voorhees Zimmerly Museum (USA), Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, USA), Swedbank Contemporary Art Collection (Riga, Latvia), State Bank of Latvia (Riga, Latvia).