Exhibition of graphics artist Dzidra Ezergaile on show

Take note – story published 8 years ago

Quite surprisingly, one of the greatest - if not the greatest - privately-owned collections of Latvian graphic art is located just on the Arctic Circle, in the Salekhard city of the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region in Russia. 

Among the xylographs, lithographs, bookplates and other pieces of Latvian graphics in Dmitriy Frolov's (Дмитрий Фролов) collection in Salekhard are about 200 works of Dzidra Ezergaile (1926-2013), and 30 of them are on show in the exhibition at the Art Studio No.1 gallery in Rīga since November 6.

The exhibition showcases Ezergaile's unique works in techniques including but not limited to graphics - watercolors, pastels, mixed technique drawings, as well as etchings, xylographs and lithographs from private collections. Most of the works were brought here from Salekhard. 

"These are not stamps, not copies. Most of the works on display here only exist as a single copy" said German Berkovich, the owner of the gallery.

"I myself considered Dzidra Ezergaile to be a pure graphics artist. But when I saw her works from Dmitry Frolov's collection, I was shaken by the variety of her technique. I am glad that I'll be able to enjoy her works in my gallery [..]. I couldn't even imagine that so far north of the Urals a Russian man has gathered and popularized the graphics of Latvian masters" said Berkovich.

"I am studying Latvian graphics from all the periods," said Dmitry Frolov. "And I consider Dzidra Ezergaile one of the brightest representatives of this graphic art. She is unique, not similar to other artists, she doesn't fit a traditional view [..]," said Frolov.

Frolov has works from Ezergailes early, middle and late periods, and thinks that a real collector tries to chronicle the whole artistic development of an artist - from the artist's early experiments and finding a subject. For Ezergaile, the subject became her birthplace in the encompassing sense of the word - her own house, her family, the nature.

Frolov organizes exhibitions in his own city - not long ago he curated an exhibition called "Bookmarks as high art" at the Ivan Shemanosky Exhibition-Museum of the Yamalo-Nenets region.

It featured bookplates and miniature graphics from his own collection. A total of 200 works from acclaimed Russian, Latvian, German and Ukrainian artists were put on display.

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