Vilnius Cityscapes

Vilnius Cityscapes is a project initiated by the Artists’ Association Foundation. The works on display in Vilnius billboards, created using various classical graphic techniques, take us back to Vilnius in the 1960s–1980s.

The works are part of the collection of the Artists’ Association Foundation [1]. The foundation’s collection of prints includes graphic works by Rimtautas Gibavičius, Edmundas Birgėla, Alfonsas Čepauskas, Violeta Gaidamavičiūtė-Kisielienė, Vytautas Kalinauskas, Antanas Kučas, Jonas Kuzminskis, Antanas Kmieliauskas, Leonas Lagauskas, Henrikas Ratkevičius, Jūratė Stauskaite, and other artists.

While discovering the city, the artists enjoy the panoramas, atmosphere, greenery, and architecture of old Vilnius. Žirmūnai, Lazdynai, and Antakalnis emerge in the graphic sheets.

The artists’ perspectives are very different. Rimtautas Gibavičius’ city is bright and full of rhythm, and his works almost turn into abstraction, while Edmundas Birgėla’s and Violeta Gaidamavičiūtė-Kisielienė’s images of the city are rougher. The city of greenery and surprises is revealed in the graphic sheets by Leonas Lagauskas and Alfonsas Čepauskas, while fog, towers, and birds are depicted in the works of Jūratė Stauskaitė. The section of Antakalnis, as a link between the old and the new Vilnius, emerges in the graphic sheets by the city’s old-timer, L. J. Paškauskaitė, who was the only one born and raised in Vilnius. Vilnius Gothic appears amidst the new architecture in the work of H. Ratkevičius. The exhibition also includes works by Lithuanian art classics Antanas Kučas, Jonas Kuzminskis, and Antanas Kmieliauskas.

The works are created in wood, linen, serigraphy, etching, cyanotype, mixed media, and other techniques.

Works on the theme of Vilnius were not necessarily created as personal gifts or on the initiative of the artists’, they were often commissioned for special occasions to reflect the representative side of the city and its glorious past.

Best, S

[1] until 1994, Lithuanian Art Foundation, an artist organization active in 1944–1994

Janina Lili Paškauskaitė. Steamboat Trip on the Neris River. 1979, etching, drypoint (2/20), 31.5 x 43.5 cm

JJanina Lili Paškauskaitė studied graphic arts at the Lithuanian Institute of Art from 1944 to 1951. Her talent as a portrait painter emerged at an early stage of her career, which was fully revealed in the creation of a series of works about famous Lithuanian people. She created etchings and book illustrations (Albinas Žukauskas’ Cloud Shepherdess, 1962; Homer’s Iliad, 1963; Balys Sruoga’s Bangų viršūnės, 1966, etc.). The artist has mastered various graphic techniques. Her elongated format works are often composed of several sheets. The artist’s masterful skills are often revealed in her works with light and clean lines and multi-layered narratives. The artist has dedicated some of her landscapes to her hometown. J.L. Paškauskaitė’s gaze covers every detail of the city: old and new buildings, streets, cars, the river, and trees. The graphic sheet captures the calm atmosphere of the city, the slow passage of time, and the architectural contrasts. A steamboat calmly sails along the Neris River towards Antakalnis, approaching the Slushko Palace on the right. The Mindaugas Bridge over the Neris will be built in a couple of decades.

Violeta Gaidamavičiūtė-Kisielienė. The Wall. From the series Vilnius. 1991, etching (95/100), 79 x 57.5 cm

Graphic artist Violeta Gaidamavičiūtė-Kisielienė is a graduate of the Lithuanian Institute of Art. Her early graphic works were created mainly using the etching technique, and she did not shy away from accurately reproducing the depicted objects, flowers, buildings, and everyday surroundings. Later, she developed a taste for silk-screen printing, which offered many aesthetic possibilities. The large-format etchings created using this technique reveal different moods, a sense of space, compositional and color dynamism and rhythm. In her early years, Gaidamavičiūtė-Kisielienė also created a series of nine etchings, Vilnius. In one of the works in the series, The Wall, the artist captured the wall of University Street. Similar buildings, which have survived to the present day, with the silhouettes of former houses dotted on them, abound in other parts of Vilnius old town. The face of the building is rough, with every brick, unevenness, and crumbling of the building important. The artist interprets Vilnius as a place of past and present experiences, and in the portrait of the wall she looks for signs of an unrepresentative city and lost time.

Vytautas Kalinauskas. Girls’ Night, III. Žirmūnai. 1972, author’s technique, 36 x 47.5 cm

Vytautas Kalinauskas is a painter, stage designer, and artistic personality who shaped the image of creative and bohemian Vilnius in the 1960s–1980s. The artist illustrated and designed almost 200 books (most notably Goethe’s Faust, 1977; Dante’s The Divine Comedy, 1987), and created stage designs for 30 plays. The artist’s creative imagination was inspired by theatrical masks, works of art, and city life. Each sheet of graphic art dedicated to the city is like a jazz composition, intertwining art and the theatrical play of life. In one of the early series dedicated to the theme of Vilnius, The Zodiac of Old Vilnius, 1966, the city’s artifacts are linked to cosmogonic signs. In the Girls’ Night, III, the artist captured the spirit of the new Žirmūnai district, which emerged on the left side of the Neris in the early 1970s: it is summer, warm, and its stylish inhabitants look out of the windows decorated with flowers. The next sheet blends the city’s everyday life and the historic Cathedral (then the Picture Gallery) into an indivisible whole, without shying away from the details of the period: tight silhouettes, a handbag and the heels of women’s shoes, bell bottom pants, and motorbikes – an integral part of city life.

Vytautas Kalinauskas. The Rhythms of Vilnius, I. 1973, author’s technique (8/15), 36.7 x 49 cm

Edmundas Birgėla. Dormitory. 1979, linen engraving, 36.5 x 35 cm

Edmundas Birgėla is a graphic artist by nature, a student of the Lithuanian Institute of Art, which he graduated in 1978. He learned and adopted many professional secrets from his teacher, serigraphy master Mikalojaus Povils Vilutis, and other professionals. Later, he taught students at the Šiauliai Pedagogical Institute. The artist has tried various graphic techniques: serigraphy (screen printing), dry needle, linen etching, etc. In 2007, he produced a book Monotype, which detailed the possibilities of a single print, combining the mediums of printmaking and painting. Birgėla is not afraid to experiment, to push the boundaries of printmaking or painting. His paintings are also very graphic: the focus is on line and color spots. One year after his studies at the institute, the artist created a work that reveals the life of a typical urban dormitory in the 1970s with a sharp, harsh brushstroke and black/white contrast. Critical and humorous, the work captures perhaps all the inhabitants of the dormitory, who are trapped in a square box for a long time, and who solve their daily problems in the shared kitchen, basement, shower, and hallways.

Funded by:

Project team:

Project tutor – Solveiga Gutautė

The author of the texts - Saulė Mažeikaitė Teiberė

Audiovisual solutions - Andrius Grigalaitis

Sources:

Lietuvos dailininkų žodynas 1918 –1944. Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. Vilnius, 2013

Lietuvos dailininkų žodynas 1945–1990. Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas. Vilnius, 2016.

100 šiuolaikinių Lietuvos dailininkų (parengta pagal Soroso šiuolaikinio meno centro dokumentaciją, sudarė Raminta Jurėnaitė). R. Paknio leidykla. Vilnius, 2000