Pablo Picasso has painted a lot of self-portraits and each of them is a masterpiece. Take the one created ca. 1900 and exhibited in the Museum Picasso in Paris: it shows a handsome face, a keen, observant and meaning look, the blue colour dominates in its various gradations and no details are excessive. And then there is a Self-Portrait with a Palette (1906, Philadelphia Museum of Art) which has been reproduced numerous times and even used on the cover of a book about the artist. Only a short distance of six years lies between them, but what we see is a different kind of painting and artist. Vincent van Gogh painted himself in various situations, and Albrecht Dürer eternalised aperfect beauty, mind and feelings, but with a dose of narcisism. We cannot imagine art history without Rembrandt’s self-portraits, eitherThey display particular depth — once you have looked into it, you feel captured as his portraits reveal a lot about Time, Man, Love and Suffering, in a word, about an artist’s mission. The late 20th century gave us Marlene Dumas, David Hockney, Julian Schnabel and many more that have portrayed themselves. And we do have masterpieces in our national art — the Self-Portrait of Jānis Pauļuks (1950) where we can see him as young, handsome, talanted man of genius. This work is the property of the Latvian National Museum of Art and has been reproduced on the cover of a book about the artist. Painters have also depicted their colleagues, representatives of their own guild, with sarcasm and irony, but also feeling the necessity of them – an artist needs his fellow-artists, someone who shares his views. Our artist Imants Vecozols has painted Konrāds Ubāns, paiter and his teacher, for whom he feels a deep respect and of whom he often speeks with gratitude and fondness. Vecozols has also portrayed his colleagues — Juris Jurjāns, Aleksejs Naumovs. So we may say that everything goes on. Nowadays artists love to paint themselves as they are good sitters, but not only. It is a way to speak about the most essential things in art: their experience, pain, loss, sufferings, longing and fulfilment. They are more emotional, sensitive and also more merciless. Is it so? We can see that in the exhibition, where Imants Vecozols, Normunds Brasliņš, Andris Eglītis, Valdis Krēsliņš, Jānis Purcens, Juris Petraškevics, Anna Baklāne, Laima Bikše, Ilze Avotiņa, Vija un Kaspars Zariņi, Gita Šmite, Aija Zariņa have portrayed themselves or some other artist.