Jānis Kalmīte

During the course of his career, Kalmīte participated in over 100 exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Latvia, Germany, Sweden and other European countries. The 100th anniversary of his birth was commemorated in 2007 with a solo exhibition at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Rīga, and in a dual exhibition with the work of his artist daughter, Lelde Alīda Kalmīte, at the Valmiera Museum (Valmieras novadpētniecibas muzejs). The Salvatorkolleg in Bad Wurzach, Germany, where Kalmīte and his family lived before immigrating to the United States in 1950, also presented an exhibition of work the artist produced during his years in Germany.

Coming of age during the first period of Latvia’s independence between the two World Wars, Kalmīte studied in the figural master studio of Ģederts Eliass at the Latvian Academy of Art, from which he graduated in 1935. He joined the artists’ society Mūksalieši, whose stated mission was to develop a Latvian national art, following in the footsteps of artists such as Ādams Alksnis and Teodors Ūders. Kalmīte left Latvia with his wife Alīda (born Zīverts) and infant daughter Guna, as political refugees in 1944, when Latvia was invaded by the Soviet Union. He spent six years as a displaced person in Germany (where a second daughter, Lelde, was born) and then immigrated to America at age forty-three. While he lived to witness the re-establishment of Latvian independence in 1991, he never returned to his homeland. He died at age 89 and his remains were later taken to his hometown of Valmiera, Latvia for interment in the Kalmīte family plot.

Jānis Kalmīte (2 March 1907, Kauguri parish (now Valmiera Municipality) - 3 July 1996, USA) was a Latvian expressionist painter and among the best-known artists in the Latvian post-World War II diaspora community. His name is associated with the development of a singular theme – the rija. Rijas, or threshing barns, were historically among the oldest structures on the traditional Latvian homestead. Throughout his half-century of exile from Latvia, Kalmīte transformed the rija into an artistic symbol for the persistence of Latvian ethnic culture in the face of invasion and occupation by foreign powers.