Sculptor Mikelis Pankoks
Hall 5
The layout “Life and creative work of sculptor Mikelis Pankoks (1894 - 1983)”. Mikelis Pankoks’ life and creative work have always attracted not only professionals and experts, but also attention of a wider public.
A fisherman and a sculptor, a timber cutter by the will of the God, having been seeking and having found eternal defiance reason – the talent of a thinker and a sculptor, Mikelis Pankoks’ life was a struggle for survival. His first exhibition was in August 1925 in Nica district in the Liepaja region and the last one in Latvia – in December 1943 in the Liepaja museum. Between these two there were 32 exhibitions in various Latvian towns and cities and many hundred of sculptures. A part of them – 128 – Mikelis Pankoks’ enormous collection in Latvia is kept in the Liepaja History and Art Museum. Together with it there is the sculptor’s personal archive: biographical documents, correspondence, photos. In autumn 1944 the period of his lifetime started that for a long time had the following spatial explanation in Latvia: “Is missing”. And an addition: “It is thought that he perished”.
It was only in 1992 that the sculptor’s destiny’s mystery was solved: refugee’s life in Germany, Austria and them since 1951 calm and quiet life in Switzerland, in Kura Valdhause mental hospital. However, even there Mikelis Pankoks was continuing to create, and small sculptors, stepping out of the mental hospital’s doorstep, attracted society’s attention. Nowadays Mikelis Pankoks’ works are kept in many private collections in Switzerland, as well as in Kura Bindner Art Museum and in Collection de l’Art Brut in Lozanne.
The layout allows to follow the sculptor’s course of life, his creative search and aspirations, see both in Latvia and Switzerland made sculptures.
