Edgars Vinters

Biography

In 1937 the eighteen-year-old Edgars Vinters received advice from the painter Hugo Kārlis Grotuss that changed his manner: to give up the “dark phase” that had grown out of his lessons with Irbe, to use lighter primers and to bring more freshness and colour into his pictures.

He was born on 22 September 1919 in Riga, the only child of Hermanis Vinters, a facade and decoration painter, and his wife Anna, née Kalniņa. At ten he met the popular pastellist Voldemārs Irbe, who saw talent in the boy, showed him the basics of pastel and taught him to see beauty in things that seem insignificant. From 1935 Vinters wrote short pieces for children’s and youth magazines and illustrated them himself with pen drawings and linocuts. With the fees he paid part of his tuition at a commercial school, which he attended until 1940 after changing schools.

In those years he was also commissioned to paint a series of porcelain plates intended as a gift for President Kārlis Ulmanis.

In 1940 Vinters entered the Art Academy of Latvia. His professors included Jānis Kuga, Leo Svemps, Jānis Cielavs, Valdemārs Tone, Jānis Annuss, Kārlis Miesnieks and Vilhelms Purvītis. During the German occupation his drawings and watercolours were also printed in German magazines. In 1944 he had to leave his studies: he was drafted into the Latvian Legion and sent to work near Toruń. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviet Army and ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp near Moscow. Russian officers noticed his ability and allowed him to set up a studio; according to other accounts, he also put together an orchestra. He first showed the drawings and paintings of that time only in 2012, to an admirer of his work who knew it well, and in the same year they were published as a book.

In 1947 Vinters returned to Riga and began teaching art and technical drawing at a school. At the same time he studied at the Jānis Rozentāls Art School and in 1949 obtained his teaching qualification.

He worked from the subject, mostly outdoors. As a child and young man he drew in pencil and ink, then briefly made linocuts and pastels before arriving at oil painting, which remained his main medium to the end. Watercolours appeared from time to time, and in the 1970s monotypes, as a particular episode. He painted Latvian landscapes in every season, flowers and city views; between 1972 and 2010 he made many pictures of Old Riga. Critics noted his handling of light and colour: through layering and blurring he achieved different states of illumination even within a single work. He described his chief aim as striving for the light. A realist in manner, he also drew inspiration from the Impressionists.

In the Soviet period Vinters’s exhibitions were held in Riga and other cities of the Latvian SSR. After independence was restored in 1991, attention to him grew: solo exhibitions were held regularly in Latvia and then abroad. According to some accounts, his first English exhibition took place in 1992, according to others in 1993; the United States followed and, from 2006, Germany. His works are in private collections, among them, it is reported, that of Princess Diana. In April 2013 President Andris Bērziņš presented a painting by Vinters to President Abdullah Gül of Turkey and his wife, who were visiting Latvia on a state visit. President Valdis Zatlers awarded the artist the Order of the Three Stars on 16 November 2009.

In 1951 Vinters married a fellow teacher, Helma Krause; their son Ilmārs was born in 1958. The artist died in Riga on 29 April 2014 and was buried on 2 May in the First Forest Cemetery beside his mother. In 2017 a studio bearing his name opened in Dunte, in an annex to the Münchhausen Museum, and in 2020 the Latvian National History Museum showed the exhibition “Starting Point”, with his views of Old Riga alongside photographs by Mārtiņš Kudrjavcevs taken from the same vantage points.