Mārtiņš Krūmiņš

Mārtiņš Krūmiņš (March 2, 1900 – 1992) was a Latvian-American Impressionist painter. He left Latvia after World War II and came to the United States in 1950. As Janis Siliņš wrote in a book about Mārtiņš Krūmiņš (Published by the Latvian Humanities and Social Science Association in 1980 and not copyrighted) "Mārtiņš Krūmiņš ... belongs to those artists of his generation, who amidst the changing trends of contemporary art, after thirty years in exile and emigration, as still basically close to and developing the traditions of their homeland art – of the 'Latvian or Riga School'".

Mārtiņš Krūmiņš was born in 1900 in Riga, Latvia. His father owned rental cottages along the Baltic Sea and engaged in various forms of business. The family was not wealthy and life was hard. Mārtiņš was a keen observer and the images which he observed as a child – the seashore, the many cloudy, northern days, the fishermen and their boats and work – these influenced his entire life and work. These were the early images upon which his heart opened.

Mārtiņš attended a traditional elementary school in Riga and when the First World War broke out the family moved to the provincial town of Valmiera to escape the advancing front. As the front advanced again, Mārtiņš moved to Valka in Northeast Latvia and when living conditions deteriorated again, Martiņš moved to Irkutsk in Siberia to live with his half sisters and their husbands. Mārtiņš graduated from the Irkutsk Commercial School but as the communist regime came closer and closer and civil ware broke out between the Red and White Armies, a Latvian regiment was formed under the protection of the Allied forces which Mārtiņš joined. An order came for the regiment to go to Siberia and this led to an important adventure for Mārtiņš; exotic places, different cultures, ports in different countries: China, Korea, India, the Suez, the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.

Martiņš Krumiņš was influenced by the Russian emigre painter, Sergei Vinogradov and studied at Vinogradov's studio from 1929 to 1935. In 1935 Kruminš enrolled in the Latvian Academy of Art and was admitted to Vilhelms Purvītis' masterclass of landscape painting. The Soviet occupation took place in 1940–41 and the communists made changes in the management of the Academy and the German occupation followed in 1941 through 1945. In 1942 M. Krumiņš earned the title of an academic "artist-painter" for his diploma work "Purvciems"

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