ÿþ<html> <head> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=unicode"> <title>Elena Gaputyt. Installations</title> <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="../Js/eVPopLib.js"></script> <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="../Js/ValdoDivsLib.js"></script> <style> <!-- h1 {margin-bottom:.0001pt; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Times; font-weight:normal; font-style:italic; margin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-top:0cm} --> </style> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-2219844-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script> </head> <body bgcolor="#F4F9FF" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" link="#000099" vlink="#000099" alink="#000099"> <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="863" style="border-collapse: collapse" bordercolor="#111111"> <tr> <td valign="top" align="left" colspan="2" width="863" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse" bordercolor="#111111" width="100%" id="AutoNumber1"> <tr> <td width="30%"> <a href="../Index_en.htm"> <img border="0" src="nuotraukos/LDM_logo.jpg" align="right" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="57" height="57"></a></td> <td width="60%"> <a href="../LDM/Parodos_en.htm"> <img border="0" src="../Naujausiosparodos/Naujparimages/Bendras_pavadA_09z.jpg" align="left" width="480" height="64"></a></td> </tr> </table> </center> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" bgcolor="#5B6AA8"> <b> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p ALIGN="justify">&nbsp;</p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <div align="center"> <center> <table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5" style="border-collapse: collapse" bordercolor="#111111" width="70%" id="AutoNumber4"> <tr> <td width="50%"> <blockquote> <p align="left"><span style="text-transform: uppercase"><b> <font size="4" color="#000066">Elena Gaputyt. Installations</font></b></span></p> <p align="left"><font color="#FFFFCC"><b>LDM Vilniaus paveiksls galerija <br> </b>(Did~ioji g. 4, Vilnius)<br> 2005 m. liepos 12 d.  rugpjk io 21 d.</font></p> <p align="left"><b><font color="#FFFFCC">Parodos atidarymas  2005m. liepos 12 d. 17 val. </font></b></p> </blockquote> </td> <td width="50%"> <img border="0" src="nuotraukos/virselio_nuotr_m.jpg" width="283" height="289"></td> </tr> </table> </center> </div> </b> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2" bordercolor="#FFFFFF" bgcolor="#D7E4FD"> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <dl> <div align="justify"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> </div> <div align="center"> <dt><span style="text-transform: uppercase"> <font color="#000066" size="4"><b>Elena Gaputyt</b></font></span></dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> </div> <div align="center"> <dt><font color="#000066"><b>Dr. Laima Lau kait</b></font></dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>The Lithuanian artist Elena Gaputyt worked as an émigré; her chosen second homeland was the United Kingdom. Born in 1927, in the village of Drseikiai in the Joniakis district (Lithuania), she studied at the Joniakis Gymnasium (Lithuanian secondary school). Gaputyte spent her childhood in a traditional peasant environment, which provided her with a lifelong spiritual guideline and orientation and remained in her memory as the Promised Land. World War II, however, took it all away and brought with it the loss of Lithuanian independence under Nazi and prolonged Soviet occupation, and the concomitant guerrilla war and exiles to Siberia. Towards the end of the war in 1944, Gaputyte escaped from the Soviet occupation to Germany. She studied in Freiburg  at Ludwig University and L École des Arts et Métiers; later she crossed the Atlantic to Canada, where she studied at the School of the Art Museum of Montreal, and Ontario Art College, Toronto. Nevertheless, Europe attracted her, so she moved to Paris between 1953 and 1955 to study at L École des Beaux Arts under the sculptors Marcel Gimond and Constantin Brancusi. In 1956, she moved to St. Ives in England and then in 1964 to London to teach sculpture at Digby Stuart College (University of London). In the period she worked in bronze, terracotta and alabaster and participated regularly in exhibitions.<br> In 1975, while on a traineeship programme at the Chelsea School of Art, London, her practice underwent a major transformation. It was at that moment she created <i>The Calendar of My Childhood</i>  a minimalist wooden rectangle with changeable blocks supplemented with real symbolical elements: apples, ash or soil. This was a sculpture <i>in</i> <i>continuum</i>  a new non-traditional type of art that changed in time. In 1981, Gaputyt made <i>The Lord s Prayer</i>  she arranged marble stones found in the islands of the Aegean Sea in a circle, in which each stone signified the words of <i>The Lord s Prayer</i> she learned as a child. The artist would travel with this installation and exhibit it in different environments: for instance, on the harmonious shores of the Aegean Sea in Greece or at the Berlin Wall that divided Europe into its two hostile camps. Gaputyte chose to work with non-traditional materials associated with land art and the primary elements; many of her installations included firelight. She used to arrange burning bowls and candles in various configurations to create an emotionally suggestive field. The majority of Gaputyt s installations with fire commemorated World War II, including: <i>Peace Lights</i> (LYC Museum and Art Gallery, Cumbria, 1981); <i>Silent Witness</i> at the Anhalter railway station in West Berlin, 1984  85; <i> Memories of War</i> in Albion Studios, London, 1985; <i>A Prophesy: After 50 Years</i> (The Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, 1989). The subject of war became central in the artist s work; her personal tragedy, the loss of her loved ones and her homeland was representative of the memory of all the dead, disabled people who lost their homes and faith.</dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>In 1989, a manuscript found its way into Gaputyt s hands that inspired her to create a new work. These were the memoirs of the deportee Dalia Grinkevi ikt: <i>Lithuanians by the Laptev Sea</i>  a moderate, but shocking story about the Soviet deportations, suffering, and the inhumanity of life and death in the Gulag. Gaputyt produced the installation <i> Beyond the Arctic Circle</i>  in memory of the victims of Trofimovsk, shown in the British exhibition <i>Passages</i>, held in 1990 in Kaiserslautern (Germany). The minimalist installation consists of wooden cones  their blinding whiteness, sharp peaks and the painful rhythm are reminiscent of the Arctic Circle. While people in the West knew what World War II was, but they had little imagination of what happened in Lithuania during and after it. As the celebrations and discourse surrounding 60th anniversary of the cessation of the war has shown this year, westerners still do not understand that the war did not end in Lithuania (and  Eastern Europe ) in 1945. Gaputyt, however, produced her installations as a testament and witnessing was her avowed mission as an artist to which end she experimented with a serious subject combined with archaic semantics. She decided to publish Grinkevi ikt s memoirs in a new edition illustrated with her installations. She gave the book a symbolical title: <i>Reconciliation</i>, emphasising the Christian meaning of reconciliation and forgiveness. The book should have been published in 1991, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the deportations, but the artist did not live to see it published  dying in 1991, in London. Her friends realised her vision in 2001 by publishing it as a limited edition artist s book. The publication presents the Golgotha of the Lithuanian Gulag in English and Lithuanian and at the same time represents Gaputyt s art and life.</dt> </div> <div align="justify"> <dt>This retrospective of Elena Gaputyt organised by the Lithuanian Art Museum is the first major survey of her installations in Lithuania  unique not only in this context, but also in terms of the art of Lithuanian emigrants.</dt> </div> <sup> <div align="justify"> <dt>&nbsp;</dt> </div> </dl> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </sup> <p align="justify">&nbsp;</td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" align="center" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="287"> <a href="../index.htm"> <img border="0" src="../Muziejusirpadaliniai/Muzimages/IpradziaA.jpg" width="160" height="64"></a> </td> <td valign="top" height="62" align="center" width="576" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> <p align="left">© <font size="1">Lithuanian Art Museum<br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Comments, remarks send to:&nbsp; <a href="mailto:samogit@delfi.lt">samogit@delfi.lt</a><br> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Page updated <!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%Y.%m.%d" startspan -->2011.08.10<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" i-checksum="12623" endspan --></font>&nbsp; </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" align="left" width="863" colspan="2" bgcolor="#D7E4FD"><hr> <p align="left">&nbsp;</td> </tr> </table> </div> </body> </html>