Born in Riga on February 18, 1895, Jēkabs Kazaks demonstrated artistic promise from an early age. He studied under decorative arts pioneer Jūlijs Madernieks and later at the Riga City Art School, where his talents were shaped by Vilhelms Purvītis. World War I disrupted formal education, and Kazaks continued his studies at Penza Art School in Russia. There, he encountered the great artistic movements of his time—impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism, and even the early stirrings of cubism. His 1916 visit to Moscow was pivotal, exposing him to works by Matisse, Picasso, and most influentially, André Derain, whose gothic distortions left a deep imprint on Kazaks’ emerging style.

Kazaks’ art is perhaps most profoundly remembered for its focus on refugees—a subject that deeply marked Latvian society during and after the First World War. In works like Refugees (1917) and Mother with Child, he portrayed the human cost of war with both tenderness and formal sophistication. These were not mere documentary pieces; they were imbued with emotional synthesis, his so-called “sintezējošā vienkāršība”—the simplifying of form to heighten expression. His refugees are not anonymous victims; they are proud, weary, rooted in soil yet suspended in tragedy. In an era rife with displacement, Kazaks provided visual dignity to those erased from headlines.

More than just a painter, Kazaks became a leading theoretician of the Latvian modernist movement. In 1919, he co-founded the Ekspresionistu grupa and helped transform it into the Rīgas mākslinieku grupa—a collective that defined interwar Latvian art. As its first chairman, Kazaks wrote and spoke with fierce clarity about the artist’s role in a new Latvian state. He edited avant-garde publications like Četru vīru patiesība (“The Truth of Four Men”) and gave lectures, including the influential Par mākslu (“On Art”), where he envisioned an art rooted in national character yet open to European innovation. His role as a cultural leader was as enduring as his brushwork.

Kazaks' artistic evolution is both fast-paced and profound. From the impressionist softness of his early works to the structured boldness of his expressionist period, each phase brought new tools to his emotional repertoire. In 1918–1920, his palette brightened, and he experimented with decorative color blocks, revealing a more optimistic note despite his worsening health. Notable works from this period include Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, Two Women, and Self-Portrait with a Pipe. In his final year, as tuberculosis ravaged his body, Kazaks produced some of his most luminous and lyrical compositions—works where the trauma of the past gave way to a glimmer of hope.

Jēkabs Kazaks died on November 30, 1920, at only 25 years old. Despite his short life, his oeuvre—about 40 oil paintings and over 250 watercolors and drawings—left an outsized legacy. Most are preserved at the Latvian National Museum of Art, though some are held in private collections and occasionally shown in retrospectives. A memorial exhibition was held in 1922, and again in 1995 to mark his centenary. A lesser-known fact is that Kazaks worked briefly for the Latvian Refugee Committee and even hand-wrote small magazines with fellow artists in exile. His vision continues to inspire a generation of Latvian artists who see in him a prophet of national introspection and artistic bravery.