Felicita Pauļuka

100th birthday exhibition The Tower

09.05.2025.- 28.06.2025.

A four-year-old girl plays fragments of Verdi’s Aida on the piano from memory. A musical child, she deeply loves her father, Kārlis Fridrihs Augusts Jānke, from whom she inherits both musicality and a love for music. Her father, it is said, would play Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and Schumann for close friends. His profession and livelihood had nothing to do with music—he worked as a senior accountant at the Maikapar Tobacco Factory in Riga. He was married to Rozālija Vilhelmīne Jānke, and on May 8, 1925, they had a daughter, Felicita Anna Renāte—a quiet, reserved, composed child who seemed destined for a life devoted to music. But that didn’t happen. Although music would accompany her throughout her life, it became the background to her creative search, a source of inspiration and drive for her art. Music remained part of her daily life and celebrations.

The girl created works signed with her name—FELICITA—and also signed some as FELICITA PAUĻUKA, the surname she adopted on June 23, 1943, and kept all her life, even after divorcing the painter Jānis Pauļuks on June 17, 1960. In her first year at the Art Academy (1940), her professors described Felicita as a genius—a sentiment often heard by Džemma Skulme, expressed by Otto Skulme, then the rector of the Academy, and echoed by Professor Ģederts Eliass, her thesis advisor. Students from other courses would come to see her drawings—something unusual, especially her charcoal work, which became her first significant medium. Then came everything else. Felicita worked with sanguine; her name became synonymous with pastel. She was unmistakably an artist who walked her own path—on a single sheet of paper, she could combine pastel, tempera, and oil—unite the incompatible—fire and water. Creation required solitude, a natural state for Felicita. She needed a white, lofty marble tower, like those sought by poets seeking refuge from the mundane. Felicita’s Tower was a model of asceticism, a space with nothing superfluous, where the artist trusted only natural materials—brick, wood, plaster. Her windows brought vast expanses into her studio, with views over half of Riga, for Felicita’s Tower is located at the highest point of the building at the intersection of Lāčplēša and Avotu Streets—close to the sky. This was her world, her kingdom, her celle—if not to call it a studio. For random passersby, there was no place there; she needed to be alone, with music—Bach, and her father’s beloved Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schumann. In the evening twilight, Vivaldi’s 18th century plays in the Tower.

Felicita’s circle of friends was limited. Most often, they were her models—special people: Inna, Biruta, Vaira, Žanna, Irēna—people through whom the artist felt life, human emotion, the beauty and uniqueness of humanity. Felicita had a Renaissance-era attitude toward people, later criticized and rejected, but to Felicita, a human being was and remained the crown of creation, the embodiment of absolute beauty—affirmed not only through the eyes as mirrors of the soul, but through bodily outlines, gestures, silhouettes, and every movement. The essence of a person speaks through the body’s language. And she herself was a Renaissance person, serving beauty through worship. For her, everything true—not artificial, fake, or fabricated—was beautiful. Beauty is truth. And so is her art, which firmly belongs on the shelf of eternal values. Not to mention the woman in her art, her nudes and portraits.

Beauty is also expressed through children—their joy for life, enthusiasm, and serious sense of responsibility. Children—the embodiment of the future and faith—are given nearly the central place in the TORNIS exhibition. There is original graphic work—covers for the magazine Zīlīte, and the remarkable linocut series All for Children. It was this series that provided Felicita with the financial means to refurbish the Tower, set up a studio, and create a much-needed space for art, music, and meetings with friends. Though Felicita was a person of solitude. Solitude was essential for her to live. It is a precious privilege.

But an exhibition of Felicita’s art cannot be done without her charcoal drawings and pastels. Yes, they are more widely seen and are her signature. In Felicita’s art, the model holds great significance. Art historian Ausma Belmane once told Felicita Pauļuka that she places her model on a pedestal. How could it be otherwise when she painted such creative figures as actresses Lilita Bērziņa and Ērika Ferda, writer Ilze Indrāne, artists Rita Einberga, Baiba Vegere, Bruno Vasiļevskis, Ēvalds Valters, Māra Vaičunas—showing again that Renaissance-era glorification of the individual, even reverence. Felicita found in them the greatness of the human spirit. Some of her models—Irēna, Vaira, Žanna, Inna, Biruta—mark different periods in her art. These women recall Modigliani’s models, but they are more real, closer to human passions. They are not ethereal beings, but real women, telling their stories through eyes, faces, bodies, silhouettes, and gestures. They are not as ascetic as Modigliani’s—they are daughters of the earth.

Felicita herself is proof of the model’s significance. Jānis Pauļuks painted her for ten years, and during that time, he created his masterpieces—works worthy of standing beside Padegs, Tīdemanis’ Hanneles, and Šēnbergs.

Can Felicita be called a model? Artist Juris Soikans, who is considered among the émigré artists, wrote:

“I knew Jānis Pauļuks well from our Academy days. Painting, for him, was the worship of beauty. Every brushstroke on canvas was part of a suggestive ritual of serving beauty in color and form—subjectively perceived and in complete inner freedom. Nothing in his life stood even a millimeter higher than his love of art.”¹

Their acquaintance began in 1940. Jānis Pauļuks was 34, a third-year student, and one of the most interesting and vivid personalities among students. That same year, Felicita Jānke entered the Academy, accepted at just 15 due to her talent. “With her striking feminine elegance and charm, Felicita quickly became the darling of the Academy students, and for Jānis Pauļuks—she became the fate of his life and, most importantly, of his art.”²

Yet, she wasn’t just a model—calling her that wouldn’t do justice. Juris Soikans wrote that Pauļuks’ art can be divided into certain expressive periods, the most significant being from 1940 to 1952—The Felicita Period. Without those 12 years, Pauļuks’ art would be unimaginable. To disregard or undervalue them would be like tearing out the heart of his art. Felicita was not just Pauļuks’ wife or model, but the other half of his artistic essence—a spiritual symbiosis between two artists.³

On the nudes of Pauļuks’ Felicita Period, Soikans writes:

“The longer you look at them, the more they move away from life’s reality, transferring the viewer into an imaginary realm of aesthetic wonder. Pauļuks’ nudes are not mere nudes but complex emotions in color and form—love of heaven and earth, charged with tenderness and tension. Living with Pauļuks’ Felicita Period works, one feels enveloped in angelic spiritual elevation that dematerializes even the environment.”⁴

Felicita’s own nudes, which captivate collectors and are rare finds, are also her creative laboratory—planes where water and fire unite, pastel delicacy meets tempera, complementing and destroying each other, creating something impossible and true. Her women are models with stories, secrets, and the unhideable. Pauļuks’ angels are distant from them. Yet they too enchant—not making you love heaven more, but the earth, with its strength, fertility, endurance, and ability to love in spite of everything—even forbidden love, not sweet or fragile. And even then, with hearts beating faster, with sighs, they whisper: life is beautiful, even if unkind, unmerciful, and so often brings tears to the eyes. These women are the jewels of both Pauļuks and Pauļuka—the artist couple enshrined in history, in art history—reminding us they are still united, and nothing is more sacred to them than art.

Self-portrait, 1940s / paper, charcoal, 42,5 x 58
Nude, 1972 / wood, tempera, 58 x 58
Nude, 1970s / paper, pastel / 112 x 76,5
Reflections / paper, pastel, 75 x 54
Nude, 1958 / paper, charcoal / 65 x 89
Coquette / paper, pastel, 94 x 65
Nude, Sleeping / paper, pastel / 75 x 110
Nude, 1974 / paper, pastel / 74 x 102
Nude / canvas, oil, 92 x 54
Māra Vaičunas / paper, pastel / 101 x 73,5
Nude / paper, charcoal, 100 x 72
Nude, 1970 / paper, pastel, 72 x 100
Nude. Sleeping, 1962 / canvas, oil, 73 x 105
Nude / paper, pastel, 63 x 46,5
Rita Einberga, 1972 / paper, pastel, 28 x 28
Nude. Seated, 1962 / paper, pastel, 105 x 73
Nude. Sleeping / paper, watercolor, pastel, 75 x 109
Nude. Seated woman with hand to face / paper, charcoal / 74 x 108
Nude / paper, charcoal, 102x73
Nude. Sleeping. Resting / paper, charcoal / 73 x 102
Illustration for the cover of the children's magazine Zīlīte / paper, ink, pastel / 31 x 23
Man's Head, 1975 / paper, sanguine, 54 x 75
Runners, 1960s / paper, linocut / 39,5 x 39,5
Illustration for the cover of the children's magazine Zīlīte 1970. No.7, 1970 / paper, pencil, watercolor / 22 x 22
Illustration for the cover of the children's magazine Zīlīte 1970 No 7, 1970 / paper, linocut / 39,5 x 39,5
Football players / paper, linocut / 39.5 x 39.5
Cyclists / paper, linocut / 39,5 x 39,5
Gymnasts with balls, 1960s / paper, linocut / 39,5 x 39,5
Skiers, 1960s / paper, linocut / 39,5 x 39,5
Jānis Deinats. Workshop Tower on the corner of Lāčplēša and Avota streets, 1998 / photography, 119 x 98
Jānis Deinats. Felicita Pauluka, 1998 / photography, 96,5 x 119
Jānis Deinats. View from the window of the artist's studio, Tornītis, onto Avotu Street, 1998 / photograph, 120 x 95