Ilze
Rikhardovna Rudzite

Ilze Rikhardovna Rudzite was born in Riga on January 24, 1937 in the family of the famous Latvian poet, philosopher and public figure Richard Yakovlevich Rudzitis and the artist of the drama theater Ella Reingoldovna Rudzite. In 1955 she graduated from the Riga Art School. Jan Rosenthal. Then from 1956 to 1963 she studied at the Academy of Arts of the Latvian SSR at the department of easel painting.

After graduating from the Academy of Arts, on the advice of the eldest son of the famous artist N.K. Roerich, the famous orientalist Yuri Nikolaevich Roerich, whom she met through her father, Richard Yakovlevich, moved to live in Altai, where, in particular, she taught at the Novoaltaisk Art School (1984 - 1991), taught an author's lecture hall, took hundreds of excursions in her workshop in Barnaul ... In 1968 he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.

Together with her husband, artist Lavrinov Vladimir Grigorievich, she studied icon painting at the All-Russian Art Scientific Restoration Center named after Academician I.E. Grabar. She painted about 30 icons, crucifixes and murals for a large number of churches and monasteries in the Altai Territory and several for the Ust-Koksinsky Church. Her portraits and landscapes, and especially the cycle of icons created, invariably delighted viewers all over the world.

I.R. Rudzite works in the genre of a thematic painting, landscape, still life, and turned to book graphics. In Altai, she acquired a pronounced creative individuality. Her work is permeated with light spirituality, gravitation towards symbolic images, appeal to the problems of morality and universal human values. It contains several thematic lines: Gorny Altai and its people, history of Russia and Altai, modern life, images of world fiction and world epic.

In addition to individual paintings, the artist writes cycles. The brightest of them are: "Love in the legends of the world", "Mountain sketches", "People of the Altai Mountains", "Big Conscience" (dedicated to VM Shukshin), "Ascent to Pushkin", "Latvia", "Jesus Christ" , "Russia".

In Rudzite's works there is no usual light source, it is always heavenly light, spiritual light. In addition to a ray of light, the author applies the rainbow principle, which has also traditionally been used in icon painting to create a mood of unearthly joy, an atmosphere of supreme happiness. But, as symbols of the battle between good and evil, contrasts of light and shadow are almost everywhere in the works.

Ilze Rikhardovna Rudzite devotes a lot of energy to educational activities. In Altai, she not only taught, painted pictures, lectured on the theory of painting, overcame the everyday difficulties of the harsh Siberian life, but also was engaged in practical matters to preserve the memory of the artist and thinker N.K. Roerich. An example of this activity can serve as her essays, articles, memories of meetings with Yuri Nikolaevich and Svyatoslav Nikolaevich Roerichs. She also studied the Altai stage of the Central Asian expedition of Nicholas Roerich. Thanks to her, V.S. Atamanov in the Upper Uimon in 1974 a memorial plaque was erected dedicated to the stay of the expedition of N.K. Roerich.

Over the years of Ilze Rudzite's creative activity, more than 40 personal exhibitions took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga, Ukraine, Italy, Germany, in the cities of Siberia. She is a participant in eight foreign exhibitions. The Riga writer Marina Kostenetskaya, who several times visited I. Rudzite's exhibition in Riga, spoke with conviction that such an exhibition expresses the problems of our present more vividly than political articles and speeches, since the language of art calls for harmony and spiritual improvement, human unity ...

Already in her early youth, the artist read a lot, deeply studied Eastern philosophy and the works of Nicholas Roerich.

Ilze Rikhardovna expressed her credo in painting as follows: “The harmony of colors and sounds is poured around us and fills the space around us, the fire of the artist's individuality passes it through himself and opens new thought forms, new artistic images only he has seen. You can't think of pictures. Creativity is always a discovery, it is an inner vision, an inner hearing of life. The artist's path is a constant burning. "