This year in March Riga City Council and the Association of Culture Institutions of Riga City Council in co-operation with Preili Municipality Council and Preili Museum of History and Applied Art as well as Jazeps Pigoznis’ friends and family established Jazeps Pigoznis’ Award in Latvian Landscape Painting. The award was created to honour the memory and lifetime contribution of Latvian Painter Jazeps Pigoznis and to promote artists’ interest to depict the nature of Latvia in painting and to highlight the significance of Latvian landscape painting. The award competition had assembled more than 100 professional artists representing various generations. Riga City Council selected Professor Osvalds Zvejsalnieks for its special award thus appreciating his particular approach to depicting Pigoznis’ native region Latgale in painting and presented the Professor with an opportunity to arrange a solo exhibition in Riga St.Peter’s Church.

Osvalds Zvejsalnieks (born in 1944) is one of the most prominent personalities in Latgale art space of his generation. His way in art is marked with regular solo exhibitions and participation in assessment shows both in Latvia and abroad.  In his life he has been fully engaged in the rebirth and sustaining of Latgalian culture by creating a great number of large-scale paintings that have acquired a symbolic meaning making him a culture land mark of Latgale and Latvia as a whole.

However, Osvalds Zvejsalnieks did not strive to use his award, the exhibition premises, alone, but rather, keeping in mind his colleagues’ limited opportunities to show their paintings in the capital as well as the lack of joint exhibitions in Latvian painting, invited his colleagues to cooperate to provide spectators with an opportunity to meet recognized artists and their less known apprentices.