Franceska Kirke was born in 1953 in Riga, Latvia. She was primarily inspired by the 1970s. The 1970s were a period of consolidation and progress in the arts, most often characterised as a response to the central strains of the previous decade. Conceptual art emerged as a key movement, a partial evolution of and response to minimalism. Land Art took the works of art into the spacious outdoors, taking creative production away from commodities and looking to engage with the earliest ideas of environmentalism. Process art combined elements of conceptualism with other formal reflections, creating esoteric and experimental bodies of work. Expressive figurative painting began to regain importance for the first time since the decline of Abstract Expressionism twenty years prior, especially in Germany where Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz became highly powerful figures worldwide. New York maintained an influential position in the international art world, ensuring that global artists continued to flock to the galleries, bars and downtown scene there. Towards the end of the 1970s, the emerging practices of graffiti and street art were beginning to gain attention in the fine art community. Artists including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat were working in downtown Manhattan and guaranteeing that spray paint and tagging gained some validity as a fine art practice, a trend which would fully emerge and dominate throughout the following decade.
Education:
1965 – 1972 J. Rozentals Riga Secondary School of Art, Riga, Latvia
1972 – 1978 Latvian Academy of Art, Riga, Latvia
1985 – 1987 Master studio of Prof. Eduards Kalninš, Riga, Latvia
Selected solo exhibitions:
1988 Gallery „Dieter Hildebr?nd gallery", Hamburg, Germany
1991 „Granovsky gallery", San Francisco, USA
1992 Salon „A", Riga, Latvia
1993 "Riga gallery", Riga, Latvia
1995 "Riga gallery", Riga, Latvia
1996 „Woman painting Woman", Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NY, ASV
1997 Gallery „Vartai", Vilnius, Lithuania
1998 „Restoration", LU gallery „Bastejs", Riga, Latvia
„Impossible Meetings", Mimi Ferzt Gallery, NY, ASV
2000 „Appropriated Images", Mimi Ferzt Gallery. NY, ASV
2002 „Museum", State Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia
„Museum", Mimi Ferzt Gallery. NY, ASV
2003 „New and old works", gallery Sachetti, Askona, Switzerland
„Applied art", gallery „Daugava", Riga, Latvia
„Vanishing", gallery Riga, Riga, Latvia
Franceska Kirke has also participated in several selected group exhibitions since 1974 in Latvia, USA, UK, Portugal, Belgium, France, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Germany, Israel, the Nederlands, Finland, and Switzerland.
Public Collections:
Jane Voorhes Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N J, USA
Art Collection of the Latvian Artist's Union, Riga, Latvia
Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany;
Museum of Art Arsenal, Riga, Latvia
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Biography taken from http://www.bastejs.lv/en/kirke/default.htm
