Kristiāns Brekte

Kristiāns Brekte (born 1981 in Riga) is a Latvian artist from a family of renowned watercolour painters — his grandfather Jānis and his mother Ilona Brekte. A graduate of the Latvian Academy of Arts in stage design, he now heads its painting department as associate professor. His provocative work draws on goth and black metal culture, religious imagery and art history to address life, death, sexuality and consumer culture through painting, stencil, sculpture and installation. His 2010 series The Madonnas of Riga earned him a Purvītis Prize nomination. In 2021 he produced the controversial Riga mural Tribute to Džemma Skulme, painted with Kiwie and Miķelis Mūrnieks on the wall of the city's 40th Secondary School.