National Romanticism

If we can believe the art historians, National Romanticism in Latvia came from Finland, bringing with it, to the apartment building facades of our cities, the heaviness of medieval castles and of rural churches.

As I was doing research for my thesis, and browsing through the small and homey Letonica section of the National Library, which was then still located on Jēkaba Street near the Parliament (Saeima), I found what the painter Janis Rozentals had written, at the time, about the new architectural style in Finland: 
“Among the Finns, this Romanticism manifests itself as the effort of a small people who, while finding themselves in difficult political circumstances, try to understand their own strengths and to define themselves artistically, and to present themselves. 
As if afraid that her ethnicity might be destroyed, she gathers her last strengths to tell the world about herself, about her national character, as if to say ‘this is my soul which must not, which cannot be allowed to be lost’.”

Drawing parallels between Finland and Latvia, and taking into account the historical situation at the time, when National Romanticism in Riga is experiencing a boom, it can be said that this movement is the Latvian Art Nouveau architects’ attempt to create a unique Latvian architecture in  form and content.