Gļebs Panteļejevs
Gļebs Panteļejevs: "Yes. I love the people I make monuments to. I genuinely love them. I couldn’t do the work otherwise. It’s not only that they make me a better person. I also end up sharing in their struggles."
Gļebs Panteļejevs is one of Latvia’s leading sculptors, known for provocative works that engage with a wide range of contexts. Born in 1965, he graduated from the Art Academy of Latvia in 1991 and has since become a major presence in both monumental and free-standing sculpture in the post-Soviet era. His work combines classical craftsmanship with an ability to address contemporary themes. At the same time, he remains deeply drawn to modernism and its abstract language of reduction and synthesis, which enriches and expands his formal vocabulary. Panteļejevs currently heads the Sculpture Department at the Art Academy of Latvia.
Wherever moral values need to be commemorated – principles, ideals, remarkable individuals – Gļebs Panteļejevs' work seems indispensable. It would be difficult to imagine twenty-first-century Latvian monumental sculpture without works such as the monument to Oskars Kalpaks (2006, granite and steel, Rīga), the memorial to the victims of communist terror The Black Threshold (2003, iron, Rīga), the monument to Gunārs Astra (2022, bronze, Rīga), or the recently unveiled monument to basketball coach Valdemārs Baumanis (2025, metal, Daugava Athletics Hall), created by sculptor Gļebs Panteļejevs. Since 1993, he has held fourteen solo exhibitions, including “Zemūdene” ("Submarine") at the Sculptors’ House in Riga (1993), “Agrā rūsa” ("Early Rust") at the “Daugava” gallery in Riga (1999), ORNiTOLOĢIJA at the Latvian National Museum of Art in Riga (2011), and “Hormonija” at the Māksla XO gallery in Riga. He is author of eighteen monumental sculptures and environmental works.
