Inga Meldere
Inga Meldere (1979) is an internationally acclaimed painter whose painting pushes the traditional boundaries of the medium. Her formal language is highly economical. As a trained restorer, Meldere rationally plans her works to achieve the desired result. The means of expression must be not more nor less than required.
The raw material of Meldere’s works is personal and collective memory and experience. This is a dialogue with herself about childhood, her experiences and reflections and what she has read. To a large degree, her art refers to art history and seeks alternative interpretations of images.
Small-scale early works by Meldere have been chosen for the LNMM collection, which possess a sensitive painterly observation of the surrounding environment and recording of experience based on refined tonal painting.
The work “Я – Лидия / I, Lydia” (2019) is from the artist’s series of paintings “Hidden Matter”, dedicated to Henri Matisse’s model, muse and assistant Lydia Delectorskaya, examining the role of dominance in their relationship. Working on the series, Meldere stressed Lydia’s important role in Matisse’s career. For Meldere, this became an exploration of the interaction of two creative personalities in a broad theoretical framework, from Aristotle’s ideas to feminism and human rights activism.
In 2010, for the first time, the 14th Vilnius Painting Triennial exhibition featured Inga Meldere's series "Unwritten" or "Neuzrakstīts", comprising several dozen small-format oil paintings. The works were created in Helsinki and Strasbourg. The series does not follow a unified narrative, each painting tells about its own moment in time and space. Meldere's art shows a sense of isolation, in which the artist herself is an observer from the outside. The human figure in the paintings is like a puppet through which various experiences and emotions can be played out.
Celebrity of Resistance. 2012.
Untitled. 2012.
The Scream of Echo. 2010.
Я – Лидия / I, Lydia. 2019.
Unwritten / Neuzrakstīts. 2010.
