Inta Dobraja

Inta Dobrāja (14 January 1940 – 4 June 2020) was a Latvian painter mainly noted for her still lifes with flowers, portraits and nudes.

Biography She was born Inta Vizbule on 14 January 1940 in Riga, Latvia, in a family of labourers. Husband – painter Kārlis Dobrājs. The roots of Inta Dobrāja's family are in Nogale, Talsi Municipality, where grandmother Emma Liepiņa lived and where mother Jete was born. Inta Dobrāja was born in Riga, but studied from the first to the fifth grade at the seven-year school in Nogale.

She studied at the ceramics department of the Riga Applied Arts High School (1954-1959), in 1967 she graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia’s Painting Department with a diploma thesis "Ceramics" (supervisor Eduards Kalniņš). At the end of the 1960s, Inta Dobrāja went to Daugavpils with her husband and some graduates of the Art Academy to found a branch of the Union of Artists there. During this time, the artist created works that directly depicted childhood impressions, such as "Fairytale" (1968) and "Playhouse" (1969). Between 1966 and 1970, she worked at the "Centība" factory and at the Vangažu reinforced concrete constructions factory as a senior aesthetic engineer. The artist has been awarded the prize of the Ministry of Culture of Latvia in the competition exhibition for the best work of visual art (1981), with the silver medal of the USSR’ TSSI for the painting "Morning" (1981).

Selected works Figurative paintings: Potato Diggers, 1980 The Beet Field, 1985 Country Madonna, 1986

Portraits: Jānis, 1980 Anete in Blue, 1986 Plein Air Self Portrait, 1988

Nudes: Mother with Child, 1983 In the Evening, 1986