Jānis Avotiņš

The main motif of the young Latvian painter Jānis Avotiņš (born 1981) is as clear as it is essential: the presence of human beings marked by a fundamental loneliness. In his paintings, the figures depicted are alone, left to their own devices and usually extremely small in scale, placed in a large spatial context. His paintings appear like contemporary portraits of human life – portraits that have a random character and yet seem to address something predetermined. The ambivalence and vulnerability of modern life is particularly emphasised by the blurred contours and soft colours of his paintings.