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Raimonds Staprans
Painting, Bay Area
American
(Riga, Latvia, 1926 - )


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Biography

The dazzling, brightly hued paintings of Raimonds Staprans radiate a vibrant energy that helps to define the artist’s distinctly Californian sensibility. For the past fifty years, the Latvian-born painter has found inspiration in “the unbelievable intensity of the sun” that is unique to his adopted California home. “The light is so white and so aggressively energizing,” he once said, that “it is impossible to ignore it.”1

As a young child in Riga, Latvia, however, Staprans’s first sketches were of the coffins and funeral processions that he observed at the mortuary across the street from his family’s apartment. When the Soviet army invaded their city in 1944, his family fled to Germany where the young Staprans was encouraged to continue his studies at the School of Art in Esslingen. After mastering the fundamentals of art making, he moved to a small Latvian community halfway around the globe in Salem, Oregon. He soon enrolled in art classes at the University of Washington, where he studied with Mark Tobey and Alexander Archipenko, completing his degree in 1952.

That same year Staprans moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to begin graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and like many artists—including his instructors Karl Kasten and Erle Loran—he began painting in an abstract expressionist style. But Staprans also took note of the figurative style emerging in the Bay Area and he set forth to prove that he could paint successfully in both an abstract and a representational way. Never content to adopt either style wholeheartedly, Staprans eventually chose to hover midway between the two distinct modes.

In Way Too Many Unruly Oranges, a mass of intensely colored citrus fruit is haphazardly arranged on an upturned table. At first, the composition calls to mind the cartoonlike, pop imagery of Wayne Thiebaud, however, according to critic Peter Frank, Staprans is “no mere eye-candy confectioner … The starkness of his subjects’ contours, and the powerful architectonic structure underlying his pictures, counterweigh the citric sweetness of his rich, slightly drippy oils.”2 In many ways Staprans actually shares more in common with 19th-century French painter Paul Cézanne, whose well-known still lifes emphasize the underlying geometric structure of objects arranged in compositions with slightly skewed perspectives. Staprans’s goals, however, extend far beyond achieving technical and compositional proficiency. He firmly believes that all paintings need to possess a little “magic,” and that a successful painting should also entertain the viewer. “My painting is never really serious,” he once explained, “I like to bring pleasure to the viewer and I enjoy teasing them just a little bit—pulling their leg.”3

To be sure, the “unruly” nature of Staprans’s composition is intentional. “Many paintings look haphazard or unfinished,” critic Peter Mendenhall has explained, “yet they are, paradoxically, about control. Every inch of canvas is deliberated, distilled, checked, reworked, and judged.”4 Oranges is reminiscent of a series of box-paintings that Staprans undertook simultaneously, in which he painted small boxes filled with ordered rows of cherries and other fruits. By contrast, this haphazard arrangement reveals the tension between order and chaos that characterizes much of Staprans’s work. Rather than allow the tension to hinder his creative abilities, however, Staprans embraces it. “I think that as an artist,” he once proclaimed, “the reward is to rearrange the world.”5 —A.W.

1. Raimonds Staprans, quoted in Raimonds Staprans, exh. cat. (Berlin: Galerie Redmann, 1988), 13.
2. Peter Frank, “Raimonds Staprans,” exh. brochure (San Francisco: Maxwell Galleries LTD, 1998), n.p.
3. Staprans, quoted in Susan Landauer, The Lighter Side of Bay Area Figuration, exh. cat. (Kansas City: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2000), 14.
4. Peter Mendenhall, “Raimonds Staprans,” Raimonds Staprans, exh. cat. (Pasadena, Calif.: Mendenhall Gallery, 1997), n.p.
5. Staprans, interview with Paul J. Karlstrom, Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, 50.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)


Born in 1926 in Riga, Latvia, Staprans’s first sketches were of the coffins and funeral processions that he observed at the mortuary across the street from his family’s apartment. His family fled to Germany in 1944 where the young Staprans was encouraged to continue his studies at the School of Art in Esslingen. After mastering the fundamentals of art, he moved to Salem, Oregon. Staprans enrolled in art classes at the University of Washington, where he studied with Mark Tobey and Alexander Archipenko, completing his degree in 1952. That same year, Staprans began graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and like many artists—including his instructors Karl Kasten and Erle Loran—he began painting in an abstract expressionist style. But Staprans also took note of the figurative style emerging in the Bay Area and he set forth to prove that he could paint successfully in both an abstract and a representational way. Never content to adopt either style wholeheartedly, Staprans eventually chose to hover midway between the two distinct modes.  Staprans currently lives in San Francisco, California. [Bio from Juicy Paint Exhibition, input by R. Faust, 8/1//2010]

Raimonds Staprans was born in 1926 in Riga, Latvia. As a young child, his first sketches were of the coffins and funeral processions that he observed at the mortuary across the street from his family’s apartment. When the Soviet army invaded their city in 1944, his family fled to Germany where the young Staprans was encouraged to continue his studies at the School of Art in Esslingen. After moving with his family to Salem, Oregon, he enrolled at the University of Washington, completing his degree in 1952, and then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and studied with Karl Kasten and Erle Loran at the University of California, Berkeley. Way Too Many Unruly Oranges will be the second painting by Staprans in the SJMA Collection. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)


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