Maija Tabaka

Legendary Latvian painter Maija Tabaka came onto the art scene in the 1960s. Her style is recognisable not only in the local but also the international context. It features surreal landscapes, psychologically acute characterisations and use of vivid colours for expressing theatrically romantic scenes. Tabaka’s favourite compositional technique is collage, i.e. the simultaneous depiction of many layers of reality, in which mythological and historical elements coexist in a surreal whole with the artist’s memories, travel notes and depictions of close companions. In this work, this is the image of actress Regīna Razuma. Razuma was an important model for Tabaka throughout her life, able to shift in line with the constant transformations of the dramaturgy in the painter’s works. On this occasion, Regīna poses in a colourful costume on a pedestal, flanked by classical and Renaissance sculptures in the famous Loggia dei Lanzi in the central square of Florence. A group of young, possibly Latvian female painters sit close together behind the actress. This group portrait gives the work both a compositional and a substantive accent, further highlighting the model’s figure. The painting acquires the charm of a hidden message from the fact that Regīna Razuma is placed in the location of the loggia where the sculptor Giambologna’s “The Abduction of the Sabine Women” sits in reality. Is this a coincidence or, looking at the personages in Tabaka’s paintings, should we recall the fate of the Sabine women?

In the Museum. Study. 2009 –2010.