[1] Throughout his half-century of exile from Latvia, Kalmīte transformed the rija into an artistic symbol for the persistence of Latvian ethnic culture in the face of invasion and occupation by foreign powers.

[2] Coming of age during the first period of Latvia’s independence between the two World Wars, Kalmīte studied in the figural master studio of Ģederts Eliass at the Latvian Academy of Art, from which he graduated in 1935.

He spent six years as a displaced person in Germany (where a second daughter, Lelde, was born) and then immigrated to America at age forty-three.

[7] His name is virtually unknown in American artistic circles, but within the global Latvian diaspora community his fame grew during his lifetime.

The work of Vincent van Gogh was a major early influence, and he greatly admired many European modernist artists, such as Rouault, Vlaminck and, in particular, Braque.