Kuluta

Painting “Kuluta” comes from collection of works by Nicholas Roerich, which was sent from India to the Latvian Roerich Society in the 1930s. This painting with others works came to Riga from the Kullu valley in the Western Himalayas in 1937. The artist himself and his wife Helena carefully selected the paintings for Latvia. Collection was exhibited in museum of Latvian Roerich Society till 1940. With the Soviet occupation of 1940, the Latvian Roerich Society was dissolved. The further history of the collection is tied to the dramatic historical political situation in Latvia during the war and Stalin’s repressions. A chain of events resulted in the collection being deposited with the State Museum of Latvian and Russian Art (now the Latvian National Museum of Art) in 1950.
Kuluta – an ancient name for the Kullu valley. This place on the border between Lahul and Tibet is known as the valley of 360 gods. The Roerich family lived here in Naggara from 1928 until 1947. A statue of the valley’s protector, Raj Guga Chohan was found not far from the Roerich home and is now in territory of the estate. The painting reveals the master’s finest painterly qualities of his India period – clean, saturated colours, a laconic, generalised form and expressive composition. The velvety surface of the tempera layer absorbs light and creates a special depth and saturation of the colours.