A retrospective exhibition of the work by Valentinas
Antanavicius Life Without Parade

Open April 25 –  June 4, 2006

 

The artist Valentinas Antanavicius has been described by the art critics as ‘a living classic’ and ‘a champion of Lithuanian Modernism’. In his works, he has bravely addressed poignant social issues. In 1992 his overall contribution to art has been recognized by the Lithuanian National Prize.  

The artist was born 2 May 1936 in Kusliskes village (Siauliai region). In 1956-1962 he studied at the State Art Institute in Vilnius majoring in graphic arts, fresco and mosaic. He started exhibiting in 1962 and has since given over 20 solo exhibitions and participated in 120 group exhibitions in Lithuania and abroad.

At the exhibition marking the artist’s 70th anniversary, he shows the impressive number of 155 pieces of painting, water-colour, assemblage and prints.

Associated for many years with the so-called ‘quiet Modernism’ Antanavicius has also established an aesthetic idiom of his own described by the art critic Antanas Andrijauskas as the ‘aesthetics of ugliness’. The imagery of his canvases and, especially, assemblages conveys the existential situation of man at the turn of the 20th century. He is one of the very few artists whose oeuvre reflects poignant and contemporary, often, even politicized approach to history, man and nature. Objects in his assemblages look like human faces and figures, yet always transformed, modified to reflect the artist’s mind-set and sensibility. His evocative images, whether cruel, rough, vulgar or ironic, witty, erotic or bestial, have a ruthless, unmasking effect on the viewer.

The painter has the ability to reveal things behind the ‘public face’ or ‘parade’, the term used in the Soviet times. The citation ‘life without parade’ coined by the art critic Danute Zoviene most aptly encapsulates the creative credo of the artist, his awareness of destruction and deformation simply ignored by most artists. Maybe that is the source of progress in life? 

 

Curator of the exhibition Nijolė Nevcesauskiene