September 20 is written into Latvian art with the name of Džemma Skulme: in 1925 in Riga, into the family of painter Oto Skulme and sculptor Marta Skulme, Džemma Lija Skulme was born. She later became one of the great forces in Latvian painting of the second half of the 20th century — an artist of monumental gesture and of the maiden, caryatid, and princess figures, who even under socialist realism kept alive a thread of modernism and national self-respect.

The Skulme family was already closely tied to Latvian modernism in the interwar years, so Džemma Skulme’s biography began near an art studio as much as a family home. During the Soviet decades, her painting and public voice became one of the ways culture sustained national self-awareness up to the Third Awakening.