Ilze Smildziņa
Ilze Smildziņa holds a Master’s degree from Art Academy of Latvia. The artist has held several solo exhibitions in Latvia and Lithuania and has participated in numerous local and international group exhibitions and art competitions, including ArtParis (2011), the 6th Beijing International Art Biennale (2015, 2019), the Paint One Another Know One Another competition exhibition in Beijing (2016), and the Art Gemini finalist exhibitions in London (2017, 2018). She has also taken part in art symposia in France, Belarus, Finland, India, and Cyprus.
Ilze’s works are held in private collections in Canada, Belgium, France, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the United States, Belarus, and Latvia, as well as in the collection of the China National Artists Association and the Luciano Benetton Collection. In 2023, she received the Gederts Eliass Grand Prize for her depiction of rural themes.
Her oil paintings depict cloud forms in their endless transformation, filling infinite expanses — painting becomes the medium through which to reach them. She captures fleeting moments of reality or events where truth and illusion intertwine, revealing what is possible and impossible at once. Yet her realistic painting manner convinces the viewer that the reflection they see is indeed reality itself.
