My Christmas pilgrimage to Mark Rothko’s Latvia

The city is the birthplace of the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, and in 2013 the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, now renamed the Rothko Museum, opened there. It houses works by Rothko, as well as exhibitions by contemporary artists, inside Daugavpils Fortress, which was built early in the 19th century.

This is also where I will be staying for the weekend, in one of its 10 rooms (doubles €45), providing comfort against the fearsome cold. The fortress’s ambience is rather like what is sometimes labelled as the dark period of Rothko’s last years, when the colours oozing from his palette appeared to darken. My room is certainly dark in hue, evocatively lit and warm as toast, creating the perfect resting place between mile-and-a-half walks to and from the city centre.

Sometimes, the journey to a place can offer sufficient reward. Setting out for a long weekend one frozen Friday morning from Kaunas, Lithuania’s second city, where I was visiting family and friends, two trains bring me to the far north-east of the country. From here, the final 25 miles across the border to Daugavpils always looked like being sketchy, and they are.

I am a little concerned when almost the entire train empties at the last but one station, Visaginas, and I’m virtually alone when I step off the train at its terminus, Turmantas in Lithuania. There’s no sign of a bus stop, nor a taxi. I spy one other person, and so begins a chain of one of the great wonders of the world: the kindness of strangers.

Calls are made before the stranger’s father drives me to the one and only shop. From here, further calls are made, before I’m handed the phone to speak to a man who I think is agreeing to drive me to my destination. Meanwhile, the two women working in the shop provide free coffee and insist I stay inside, as outside the temperature is falling fast.

Another woman, called Elena, introduces herself, eager to practise her English. She’s a singing teacher, on her way to a sauna and should my onward travel plans falter, invites me to stay in one of her spare rooms. She explains how Turmantas and this currently frozen corner of the world where Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus converge, has effectively been cut off by politics. “The train used to run from Vilnius to Daugavpils, but not any more.”

The shop itself is representative of this frontier, with customers speaking in Lithuanian, Latvian, Belarusian and Russian. Around 3pm, Vladimir arrives to drive us through the deep snow and plummeting temperatures. First, we must deliver a door to a house where five extremely energetic dogs live, before collecting Vladimir’s girlfriend from a second home. Then, we head to within a whisker of the Belarusian border, crossing into Latvia through a snowstorm.

On the first night, I try to find my bearings, walking amid a frozen landscape along the River Daugava, into the city. At Gubernators restaurant, I’m served their own brew of unfiltered beer, along with country pie and cauliflower cheese. Both are greatly needed.

Back outside, I admire the neon Christmas lights and decorations, glowing against the dark of night, as it’s not by chance that my visit coincides with Orthodox Christmas in January. On the edge of the city is Church Hill, where the churches of four Christian denominations stand side by side, including Saints Boris and Gleb Russian Orthodox Cathedral, completed in 1905, and where I intend to head the following evening, on Christmas Eve.

At Artileijas Pagrabi, a downstairs alternative music bar and venue, the beer taps are adorned with anti-Putin stickers, and I enjoy a nightcap of dark ale. I’m later told that this is the most “Latvian” bar in Daugavpils and that the stickers testify to the owner being a staunch Latvian nationalist. When I broach the subject of Russian identity to a friendly and open bartender, Jurgis tells me not to confuse the city’s majority Russian speakers with sympathy and support for Putin. “Quite the opposite,” he suggests.

The next morning brings the most vivid blue skies. Never mind Rothko, they bring to mind Mondrian and Derek Jarman. However, it’s Rothko whose influence is celebrated next door, and where I spend the next two hours surveying his life and work, as well as works by several contemporary artists.

Rothko – born Markus Rothkowitz in 1903 in what was then called Dvinsk and part of the Russian empire – is associated with the American abstract expressionist movement that began with the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in the late 1940s and early 50s. Rothko is best known for his “colour field” paintings, containing blocks of glowing colour, almost like a vast set of soft-focus Polaroids of every conceivable shade.

There’s a beautiful reading room containing hundreds of art books, with seven shelves dedicated to the many biographers who have attempted to understand Rothko and dissect the colossal number of works he produced. These especially concern the second half of his career, during which he painted in the same geometric style, leaving behind more than 1,000 known paintings created over a 46-year period.

Over the past decade, 17 Rothko paintings have been exhibited here, with six currently on view, provided by the artist’s daughter Kate Rothko Prizel and son Christopher Rothko, making it the only place in eastern Europe to view original work by Rothko.