On View
Not on viewObject number1968/9.68
Exodus
Artist
Nora Drapce
(American, b. Latvia, 1886-1968)
Date1958
Mediumgouache
Dimensionsmat: 30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm)
sheet: 21 1/2 × 30 1/4 in. (54.6 × 76.8 cm)
image: 17 1/2 × 26 1/2 in. (44.5 × 67.3 cm)
sheet: 21 1/2 × 30 1/4 in. (54.6 × 76.8 cm)
image: 17 1/2 × 26 1/2 in. (44.5 × 67.3 cm)
Credit LineBequest of the artist
Exhibition History"An Exhibition of Paintings by Nora Drapce, 1957 to 1962," KIA (Sept. 1962).
"The Expressionist Figure," at the KIA (January 19 - May 5, 2019).
"Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s," KIA Galleries 3 & 4 (January 21 - May 7, 2023).Label TextNora Drapce was one of the major figures in Kalamazoo’s art community in the 1950s and ʼ60s. Little known as an artist in the rest of the US, Drapce had been a widely exhibited painter in Latvia and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. She was also an esteemed professor, having taught painting for 15 years at the College of Art in Liepaja, Latvia. That part of her life ended in 1944 when, at 58, she became a political refugee. After six years in refugee camps in the heart of Nazi Germany, Drapce immigrated to Kalamazoo, where there was a growing Latvian community.
In 1950, she became an artist-in-residence at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, a position she held for the rest of her life. Much of Drapce’s early work was destroyed during World War II, and only 50 of her early European works remain. In the work that Drapce produced for several years after the war, both the subject and somber palette refer to the devastation and misery she witnessed. Her Refugee Cycle paintings belong to that period. Of her paintings, Drapce said:
“Sufferings of refugees, despair, and resignation have brought in my art and accent that seems strange and gloomy to people who have the luck to live quietly in their own homes. I have the conviction that the people who have suffered much cannot play with abstracts or simply with ideas of art for art’s sake. The hard reality has left too much of an impression.” [Label for "Art, Music & Feminism in the 1950s”, 2023]
