Mārtiņš Krūmiņš

[1] Krūmiņš attended a traditional elementary school in Riga, and when the First World War broke out the family moved to the provincial town of Valmiera to escape the advancing front.

Krūmiņš graduated from the Irkutsk Commercial School but as the communist regime came closer and civil ware broke out between the Red and White Armies, a Latvian regiment was formed under the protection of the Allied forces which he joined.

The regiment was ordered to Siberia, which led Krūmiņš to exotic places, different cultures, and ports in China, Korea, India, the Suez, the Mediterranean, and North Atlantic.

A German art critic, H. Kellenbenz, placed the Latvian painter amidst the Western Impressionists with his very personal and restrained palette.

Several years later, the art critic of The New York Times judged the same pictures differently; Martins Krumins, whose wintery landscapes are expressionistic.

He passed the examinations in architectural drawing and worked until his retirement for a company in Elizabeth, New Jersey which, incidentally, has a collection of his paintings at their headquarters in Pennsylvania.