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Zalkalns [Zal’kaln; Grinbergs], Teodors
(b nr Sigulda, 30 Nov 1876; d Riga, 6 Sept 1972). Latvian sculptor. He studied first at the Baron Stieglitz Institute of Technical Drawing, St Petersburg (1893–9), where he was enrolled in the decorative painting and etching department, as well as learning modelling under Matvey Chizhov (1838–1916). During this time he was active in the group of Latvian art students, THE GNOME (Rukis). In 1900–01 he studied sculpture in Rodin’s studio in Paris under Emile-Antoine Bourdelle and Paul Dubois. On his return to St Petersburg, Zalkalns produced small sculptures for Fabergé (1901–3) and also acted as art critic (using the pseudonym Kris Mednieks) for the newspaper Peterburgas Avizes. He was head of sculpture and composition at Yekaterinburg Art College (1903–7), where his students included Ivan Shadr; he then spent two years in Florence (1907–9), acquainting himself with the Italian masters’ techniques for bronze casting and marble carving. This experience, together with his study of the art of ancient Egypt, led him to abandon his impressionistic approach, as in his female bust Bronze (1903; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.), in favour of the more severe and refined tectonic conception of form of his mature period. This new approach resulted in simplified, generalized forms that purveyed only the subject’s essential characteristics, as in the smoothly ground marble bust of Ludmila (1913) and subsequently in the nationally poignant Standing Old Woman (1915; both Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.). In Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 Zalkalns introduced elements of Futurism into his sculptures for Lenin’s Plan of Monumental Propaganda, notably in his dynamic, geometricized monument to Mussorgsky (1919; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.). During the years of Latvian independence (1920s and 1930s) he established himself as the country’s foremost sculptor and he was Professor of Sculpture at the Riga Academy of Arts (subsequently named after him) in the early years of Soviet occupation. During this Latvian period his work, which varied from monuments to leading Latvian cultural figures to studies of animal forms and human torsos, continued to be characterized by idealized, laconic forms, as in the memorial to the poet Janis Poruks (1930; Riga, Forest Cemetery) and the sculpture Cat (1965; Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.)
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