Exhibition “In the Streets: The City as Seen by Latvian Modernists”

The exhibition offers an insight into the relationship between the city, literature and art in the first decades of the 20th century.

The first half of the 20th century was a time of rapid change for Latvian and European culture. The exhibition invites visitors to follow the experiences of Latvian poets and artists in three important cities – Riga, Berlin, and Paris. They were flâneurs and flâneuses – leisurely observers of the city who documented modern architecture, traffic, advertisements, shop windows, and the sounds and rhythms of urban spaces in texts and images. Visitors to the exhibition will similarly stroll among the exhibits, feeling the mood of the era and getting to know its visual language.

The combination of literature and art in the exhibition highlights the social and cultural changes of the era, revealing how Latvian modernists reflected and interpreted the impressions and dynamics of the changing urban environment. The exhibition includes both well-known and lesser-known works of art, poetry texts, original printed works, photographs, and video materials.