ENCOUNTERS OF LATVIAN MODERNISTS WITH SECONDO FUTURISMO IN THE 1920S (Latviesu modernistu saskare ar secondo futurismo 20.gs. 20. gados)

Research of this seemingly marginal topic in Latvian art history has revealed new information that significantly enriches the knowledge of local modernists' international contacts. Relations with Futurism have not been examined as a distinct theme before with only a few testimonies found during the fragmentary research on the late 1910s. But some moments of real contact emerge in the later period of the 1920s with the so-called episode of the Berlin Futurists and Niklavs Strunke's (1894-1966) activities in Italy. These are outstanding pages in the history of Latvian modernism characterised by the artists' direct contacts, participation in the art life of Germany and Italy, creative impulses, concrete artworks and publications. In the manifesto of 1924 Le futurisme mondial. Manifeste a Paris, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti also included the Latvian artists who belonged to the Berlin Futurists group (Ivan Puni, Ksenia Boguslavskaya, Rudolf Belling, etc.), such as Karlis Zale (1888-1942), Arnolds Dzirkals (1896-1944?), Romans Suta (1896-1944), Aleksandra Belcova (1892-1981) and Niklavs Strunke. In his Berlin period (1921-1923), sculptor Karlis Zale joined the international circle of the avant-garde, establishing contacts with the Der Sturm gallery, Novembergruppe, Russian émigré intellectuals and Ivan Puni as well as the Italian futurists Enrico Prampolini, leader of the futurist movement in Berlin, and Ruggiero Vasari, publisher of the journal Der Futurismus.