Džemma Skulme

Biography

In 1986 the Riga Film Studio made a documentary about her, “Džemma”, directed by Laima Žurgina. Its subject was sixty, and behind her already stood a USSR State Prize and the chairmanship of the Artists’ Union.

Džemma Lija Skulme was born in Riga on 20 September 1925. Her father, Oto Skulme (1889–1967), was a painter and rector of the Art Academy of Latvia until 1961; her mother, Marta Liepiņa-Skulme (1890–1962), is described as Latvia’s first woman sculptor. Her uncle, Uga Skulme, was also an artist. Her father, mother and uncle belonged to the Riga Artists Group, which shaped the development of Latvian art in the 1930s. In 1945–1947 Džemma worked as an assistant decorator at the Daile Theatre and the Latvian Puppet Theatre.

In 1949 she graduated from the painting department of the Art Academy of Latvia, and in 1955 she completed postgraduate study at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad, receiving the degree of candidate of art history. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held since 1949. From the mid-1950s she also became known as an illustrator of books and magazines. She has been a member of the Artists’ Union of Latvia since 1956; in 1977–1982 she served as its acting chair, and in 1982–1992 as its chair.

She worked in oil, acrylic and watercolour. In the second half of the 1960s her manner became more dramatic: a broad brush and the palette knife appeared, and colour grew more forceful. In the 1960s she arrived at a technique of her own, combining acrylic and oil for unusual textures, and the art historian Laima Slava sees the discovery of those years in the line: at first smooth and constructive, defining the shape of a figure, then lighter and more transparent. From the 1970s she developed the theme of the caryatid, in which she sought a woman’s ethical and spiritual strength (“The Women of Nica”, 1968; “Caryatid”, 1979). She also turned to the Latvian riflemen, to ethnography and to the principles of folk art. To this group belong “Marta in Mask” (1973), “Valentīns Skulme as Richard III” (1974) and “Dialogue” (1975). In later decades she used the naive style of children’s drawing. Among her works in the Latvian National Museum of Art are “Summer” (1959), “Folk Song” (1969) and “Macedonia Motif” (1974).

In 1976 she was given the title of People’s Artist of the Latvian SSR. In 1984 she received the USSR State Prize for the painted triptych “Song” (“A Hundred Years Ago”, “Lightning Cleaves the Sky”, “Song”) and the paintings “Threads” and “Generations”. She was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR. Solo exhibitions have been held in Riga, Moscow, Milan, Vilnius, Kyiv and Norway, as well as in Germany, Austria, Canada and the United States. Family exhibitions of the Skulmes were organised in West Berlin (1981), Pittsburgh (1986), Bergamo (1987) and Riga (1998–1999).

One episode of her life remains a heavy one for her. Her cousin Jurģis Skulme, who depicted the life of Latvians in Siberia, was accused of “slandering Soviet power”, and the Artists’ Union under her leadership voted to expel him. Decades later, at ninety, she called it a “historically conditioned betrayal of oneself”.

In the late 1980s she took part in the Awakening (Atmoda), Latvia’s national revival. In 1988 she was among the founders of the Popular Front of Latvia, and in 1989, as its representative, she was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR. In 1998 she signed the manifesto founding the People’s Party.

From 1993 Skulme was president of the Jaunrades Foundation. In 1992 she was elected an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and in 1998 the Art Academy of Latvia awarded her an honorary doctorate. In 1995 she received the Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, and in 2019 the Purvītis Prize for lifetime achievement. Her works are held by the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University in the United States.

She died in Riga on 9 November 2019. In 2025, for her centenary, the Latvian National Museum of Art opened an exhibition, “Džemma”, which ran from August 2025 to January 2026.