Kārlis Neilis (1906–1991) – painter and publicist. He studied at Tukums City Secondary School and graduated from Professor Ģederts Eliass’s Figurative Master Studio at the Latvian Academy of Art (1932). He took part in numerous exhibitions in Latvia and abroad, was a member of the Mūksala artists’ group, helped establish the Tukums Museum of Art, and from 1941 to 1944 worked as a drawing teacher at Tukums State Gymnasium and the commercial school. In 1944 he fled as a refugee, reached Austria, and lived in Salzburg, where he painted and organized exhibitions in Europe and in the United States (1970). He wrote the extensive memoir Those Crazy Years of the Painters (1986), which contains important material on many Latvian artists of the 1920s–1930s, including the writer and painter Anšlavs Eglītis, and also portrays the art life of that period. From 1960 until the end of his life, the artist travelled repeatedly to Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland, Egypt, and other countries, and attended the Venice Biennale. At the turn of the 1960s–1970s, he held several solo exhibitions in the United States.