Ojārs Pētersons

Ojārs Pētersons is a member of the “boundary breaker” generation, who brought bold, new forms of expression and messages to Latvian art in the 1980s. In his posters, graphics, installations and video installations, Pētersons employs metaphors and symbols which comment on the relevant period. He is also one of the so-called “super graphic artists”, whose large-scale, neo-Expressionist graphic works vividly illustrated the social and political contradictions of their times, raising them to the level of philosophical appraisals and acute visual metaphors. Images of breaking out and craving for art became the main motifs in the stylistically similar graphic works of Pētersons and his colleagues. 

Two unique silkscreen prints by Pētersons from the cycle “Uninterrupted Choice” have also been added to the LNMM collection. The subject of uninterrupted and inescapable choices runs through many of his works. The grandiose, cyclopian people in these scenes demolish walls, climb over barriers and escape from the dark. They are at once heroic and tragic figures, “Sisyphuses” of their time who make their choices despite seeming hopelessness and the inevitability of always returning to their starting point. They are unable to act otherwise, since their desire for action and escape is greater than the fear of failure.

Uninterrupted Choice. 1986.

Uninterrupted Choice. 1987.