Reinis Zusters

Zusters remained in the Blue Mountains for the rest of his life, living in his home ‘Jamieson’, near the Falls and Darwin’s Walk. He died on 8 October 1999 in his favourite painting chair in his studio at Wentworth Falls, one week short of his 80th birthday. He was buried in the Latvian section of Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney.

His work is represented in numerous public and private collections in Australia and abroad. His work can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. He won numerous prestigious awards in Australia, Japan and USA and was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1994. He was born to Latvian parents in Odessa, Ukraine, and died in his studio in Wentworth Falls, Australia in 1999.

Zusters’ work is represented in numerous public and private collections in Australia and overseas. He won several prestigious awards in Australia, USA and Japan, the latter being the Bronze Prize in the 1990 Osaka Triennale’90 and the Special Prize at the Osaka Triennale’93 in 1993. He achieved his win from over 29,000 artists competing from 81 countries.

For the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, Zusters completed his grandest work – a series of massive epic panels entitled The Birth of a Nation. Thirteen huge paintings consisted of 42 smaller and 34 large panels, depicting his interpretation of Australia’s development since the Aborigines first encountered white men in 1788. His wife Venita described them as “a kind of psalm-devotional and a hymn of praise to everything Australian". Birth of a Nation was exhibited at the newly opened Parramatta Cultural Centre, now called the Riverside Theatre. The Centre still holds some of these panels.

While living in the Blue Mountains and exhibiting at the Holdsworth Galleries, the coffee table book ‘Spiral Vision – Reinis Zusters’ was published in 1981 to showcase his work.

In 1976, Zusters married his third wife, artist Venita Salnajs, who is also Latvian born, and they moved to Wentworth Falls. Inspired by the mountains, he embarked on a much freer style of richly painted, spattered landscapes and details, capturing the essence and spirit of the Australian landscape and sky.

In the introduction to the catalogue ‘Reinis Zusters’, published in Sydney in 1971, artist Lloyd Rees wrote of his friend's zest for living and 'complete freedom of emotional expression', expressed in work where ‘nature’s forms and colours undergo a magic change and emerge as vital and highly individualistic paintings.’

In 1970, Zusters moved to Greenwich. Over the ensuing decades he exhibited regularly in Australia and overseas, holding one man shows at Artarmon Galleries, Darlinghurst Galleries and the South Yarra Gallery. At the Sobot Gallery in Toronto in 1968, he was the first Australian to have a solo exhibition in Canada. He also had a solo exhibition at Gallery Schauman in Essen, Germany in 1965 and at Christchurch New Zealand in 1974.

From 1968, Zusters quit his job and practised as a full-time professional artist. His cityscapes featured a rich paint surface and sharp-edged thickness of oil paint applied with a palette knife in layers. He painted urban scenes of Sydney, inland Australia and portraits. His usual signature was “Zusters”. Two of his early portraits are in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection – Sir Edgar Coles (1962) and Terry Clune (1960)].

In 1963, Zusters was one of four outstanding local artists appointed to the Lane Cove Art Panel, alongside Lloyd Rees, Bill Pigeon and Guy Warren. The Lane Cove Art Society was formed in 1965 and Zusters was an enthusiastic member for many years until he moved to the Blue Mountains.

Through his design work, Zusters was appointed Chief Designer with the Australian-American architectural firm Austin-Anderson, at St. Leonards, Sydney, which provided him with the opportunity to travel abroad. In 1960, he designed a new waterfront family home in Arabella St Longueville, on Woodford Bay in Sydney Harbour.

He won the Daily Telegraph Art Prize in 1957 and the Hunters Hill prize in 1958 and 1959. In 1959, Zusters took the Wynne Prize for Landscape, then the Rockdale Prize in 1962, the Crouch Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery in 1963 and the Mosman Art Prize, 1971. His portrait of potter Peter Rushforth was exhibited in Portraits of Australia: The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize Collection in 1988. In 1994, he was honored with the Order of Australia Medal.

In 1952, Zusters moved with his second wife, Arija Bikse, from Canberra to Pennant Hills in Sydney to help her family build their first home in Australia. Arija's father Karlis Bikse had been a prominent architect in Riga, Latvia and was an inspiration to Reinis. Their daughter Laura was born in Sydney in 1956.

Zusters stayed in Western Australia for six months, then the family was sent to Cowra Migrant Camp, where his wife and daughter stayed, while he moved to Canberra and became an architectural draughtsman with the Department of Works and Housing in Canberra. He also worked in a timber yard and painted portraits at the nearby Duntroon Royal Military College, painting late into the night after work. In 1951, he held his first solo show in Canberra, with the Art Society of Canberra. He had a second show in Canberra in 1956.

Zusters, his wife Aldija and daughter Rudita arrived in Australia as Latvian displaced persons in 1950. About 25,000 Latvian refugees migrated to Australia between 1948 and 1951. On landing in Fremantle on 5 January 1950, the family was sent to Northam Migrant Camp and Zusters' first action was to visit the bush with easel and paints. His first trip into the Australian bush was a turning point. It was a marked difference to the landscapes of Europe that his eye was familiar with. Unlike many migrants, he immediately saw the Australian bush as beautiful, rather than harsh. He remained excited and inspired by the wildness of the Australian bush and geology for the rest of his life and they were to be a continuing subject of his explorations.

Zusters studied art for two years in the early 1950s at East Sydney Technical College and painted many large portraits including Winston Churchill's gardener John Price Strange, which was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1952, as well as small informal portrait-drawings of friends. Some early portraits are held by the Latvian Society in Strathfield.

During World War II, Zusters was conscripted into the German army and worked as a war artist from 1942 to 1945, in a group of four men, that included a journalist and photographer, who were sent to document battles and important developments in the war. He and the group spent weeks digging out and burying bodies after the bombing of Dresden. He also survived being torpedoed on a ship in the Baltic Sea.

Zusters studied Art and Architecture at the Riga Technical College, Latvia, from 1935 to 1940 and took a one year course in anatomy at Riga University. He was influenced by his Latvian cultural heritage and admired the artist Voldemars Tone (1892-1958). He set up a business in Riga designing and making furniture while concentrating on painting and athletics in his spare time. He married Aldija Kapteinis and they had a daughter, Rudita (born 1942 in Riga).

Reinis Zusters OAM (15 October 1919 – 1999) was a Latvian-born Australian artist. Zusters was a prolific painter, working predominantly in oils, painting many large landscapes, including triptychs of the Blue Mountains. Zusters drew much of his inspiration from the Australian countryside, depicting the colour and form of nature as a rich and vibrant panorama.

Reinis Zusters was born 15 October 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine, of Latvian parents, Janis and Kristina, in the early years of the Russian Revolution. Zusters’ father was a postmaster in Odessa, but died before he was two years old. His mother sought work in Riga, having put both Reinis and his sister Mirdze into separate orphanages from an early age. Mirdze’s daughter, also Mirdze, later studied to be an artist in Moscow.