Painting legend Antanas Gudaitis: interwar rebel who brought the Parisian understanding of art to Lithuania | Culture

Lithuanian people in the 20th century. a contemporary of past trials, who survived two world wars, occupations and oppression, encoded capacious metaphors, multiple experiences and criticism of the Soviet existential situation in his multifaceted and rational work that did not yield to encryption.

The life story of A. Gudaitis is no less rich than his creative legacy: from a difficult childhood marked by the war, prison to studies in Paris and the largest gatherings of intellectuals of that time.

Photo by Algimantas Kunčiaus/Antanas Gudaitis in his workshop

Childhood, which ended early, was marked by war

Antanas Gudaitis was born in 1904. and was the eldest of the three children of Morta Jarulaitytė and Martynas Gudavičius. Although his father was still in the 19th century. in the issued passport, “townsman” (“mesčianin”) was written, the struggling family had to live not only in the surroundings of the city of Šiauliai, but also in difficult rural conditions in Viekšniai, especially after the father died around 1907. went to America to work in the coal mines and disappeared there.

Collection of the National MKČiurlionis Art Museum/Antanas Gudaitis. Self-portrait on a dark background

In order to help his mother, who was left alone with three small children, when he was just 9 years old, A. Gudaitis started shepherding for the farmers of Žemaitija in the summers, he also did other farm work. Domestic animals and birds were not only companions for long days, but also witnesses of difficult moments, when they would sit and cry in the woods, endlessly missing their mother.

Photo by Algimantas Kunčiaus/Antanas Gudaitis and Juozas Miltinis

During the winter months, when he didn’t have to work for farmers and herd animals, A. Gudaičius was sometimes lucky enough to attend school: first Russian, then German. The boy constantly sought to learn, was very energetic, but his health was weak, he fell ill from poverty and exhaustion. One landlord helped to alleviate the disease by noticing a sick child and ordering him to drink raw eggs. It helped, but I had to be treated more than once.

MO Museum collection/Antanas Gudaitis. Finnish sauna

During the First World War, the war, hunger, poverty and humiliation seen by A. Gudaitis as a child and experienced by himself left an impression and a heavy mark on him for the rest of his life. Later, the artist wrote about it: “I never thought that joy was my goal and that I wanted to express it. I think that a person is oppressed by one or another force and he is always seeking liberation.”

Photo by Algimantas Kunčius/Antanas Gudaitis

From prison – straight to Paris

In 1918, after the restoration of Lithuania’s Independence, fourteen-year-old A. Gudaitis, who had not completed any primary school and was self-prepared, enrolled in the high school, and after finishing it – in the Šiauliai Teachers’ Seminary. It was here that the young man immersed himself in the world of art and culture for the first time: despite his poor health, he participated in seminar performances, directed, created decorations, painted, and finally – organized his first exhibition.

Wanting to continue his studies, but not having the money for it, A. Gudaitis went directly to Kaunas to see the then Minister of Education Vincas Čepinskis, who after a tense conversation allowed the student to work for a scholarship after finishing higher education. However, political activism put a stop to science in Lithuania – in 1929 after the self-organized student strike, directed against the arbitrariness and non-transparent activities of the management, A. Gudaitis was expelled from the Kaunas Art School, arrested and imprisoned for three months.

Collection of the Lithuanian National Art Museum/Antanas Gudaitis. Village orchestra

The prison did not extinguish his ambition to create and study – on the contrary, in the late autumn of the same year, the boy decided to go to Paris with only three hundred litas saved and sewn into his mother’s jacket. In Paris, in order to make a living, he worked all kinds of jobs, starved himself, while trying to attend various free art academies, to improve in the field of drawing.

Hard work bore fruit – a year later, A. Gudaitis won a state scholarship, which allowed him to continue his art studies at the higher National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts. Paris was the capital of world art at that time, where one new art direction was replaced by another.

Photo by Algimanas Kunčiaus/Intellectual gatherings and lectures at Antanas Gudaitis’ house

A. Gudaitis himself remembered this period: “I used to visit galleries all the time so that I could understand what was going on here, so that I could start to separate the chaff from the grain in this whole market, that fair of artistic ideas, in order to orientate myself in this art movement: what it is, what is he there?”.

The wave of modernism was suppressed by Stalinism

After returning to Lithuania, in 1932, Gudaitis, together with like-minded sculptor Juoz Mikėnas, painters Vytautas Vizgirdas and Antans Samuolis, graphic artists Jonas Steponavičius, Vytautas Kazimierus Jonyns and Telesfors Kulakauskas, and the older generation artist Adams Galdiks who mentored them, formed the artist group “Ars”. The group of artists was a new phenomenon in Lithuanian culture – like-minded people sought to bring changes to the life of Lithuanian art and raise its level.

The group of artists was a new phenomenon in Lithuanian culture – like-minded people sought to bring changes to the life of Lithuanian art and raise its level.

The modernist worldview and progressive artistic ideas formed in France could not spread freely for a short time. The second Soviet occupation that started in 1944 stopped A. Gudaitis’ movement on the path of modernism. In occupied Lithuania, as in the USSR and all totalitarian states, art had to serve the ideological propaganda of the government and the education of the masses.

Collection of the Lithuanian National Art Museum/Antanas Gudaitis. Three Petronėlės

The directions of modernism and neoclassicism were replaced by socialist realism – a method of creation imbued with ideology, a requirement according to the 19th century. an example of Russian realistic art to realistically depict important persons for the state, often events invented by ideologues and desired phenomena of Soviet life. In the first post-war years, this method was implemented cautiously, because until 1947 The Soviet Union followed a moderate policy of sovietization of the Baltic countries in all areas.

Photo by Algimantas Kunčiaus/Antanas Gudaitis and Jurga Ivanauskaitė

As a result, instead of developing the themes of war, rural transformation, and work specified by the government, artists mainly painted traditional genre paintings, while A. Gudaitis, on the other hand, painted expressive colorful landscapes. The artist successfully avoided the development of political themes – his works focused mainly on the depiction of man and nature, and the relationship between man and animal. A. Gudaitis often depicted animals as metaphors of spiritual life – birds were particularly important in his works, symbolizing the human soul for the painter.

MO Museum collection/Antanas Gudaitis. Woman with birds

A teacher and inspiration for the young generation

After Stalin’s death in 1953 after the warming initiated by the new leader of the Soviet Union, N. Khrushchev, which manifested itself in the tolerance of a freer form in art, A. Gudaitis became one of the first painters who began to paint expressively, paying a lot of attention to resonant color combinations in his work. The artist continued the style developed between the wars, but in the creative phase of the Soviet era, more grotesque and irony appeared.

Tolerance for a freer form did not last long – in 1962. N. Khrushchev kicked out the “New Reality” contemporary art exhibition in Moscow, thus symbolically marking the end of the warming period in Soviet art and new attempts to stop the changes taking place in art. The main enemy of socialist realism officially became abstractionism born from the art of the “rotten West”.

Collection of the Lithuanian National Art Museum/Antnas Gudaitis. Acrobat

A. Gudaitis also started to obstruct the censors – due to his work “Triptikas MKČiurlioniu atminti”, poetic abstractions, posture and undisguised artistic priorities, he came into the sights of the union campaign against abstractionism.

Photo by Algimantas Kunčius/Antanas Gudaitis

In addition to his active creative activities, A. Gudaitis taught painting at the Vilnius State Art Institute (currently the Vilnius Academy of Arts). Here he became a teacher and inspiration for many artists, in his studio or at home he shared memories from the years spent in Paris with guests – his stories became a window to the knowledge of Western art for many.

Collection of the National MKČiurlionis Art Museum/Antanas Gudaitis. At the table

The workshop and home of A. Gudaitis, located on Kaštonų Street in the capital, was one of the unofficial cultural spaces where artists, philosophers, politicians from various fields gathered, works that would never have found their way to official exhibitions were openly displayed here, lectures and discussions took place.

Photo by Algimantas Kunčius/Antanas Gudaitis and Antanas Žukauskas in Gudaitis’ workshop

A living legacy to this day

A. Gudaitis never saw free Lithuania again – the artist spent the last few years before his death, on the eve of Independence, being seriously ill and never leaving home. The huge contrast between the weakening body, physical strength and simmering creative energy was extremely dramatic.

Despite this, the artist actively followed the political and cultural life of Lithuania, wrote letters and proposals to the Union of Artists and other institutions. Unable to go to the workshop, A. Gudaitis worked at home, in 1989. wanted to organize a large exhibition of drawings, but on April 20 of the same year died

MO museum collection/painting work of Antanas Gudaitis

Having left an imprint in the history of Lithuanian culture as one of the most influential creators and gathered a wide circle of like-minded people around him, A. Gudaitis remained alive not only in the memory of his contemporaries and students, but also in documentary footage.

Lithuanian photography classic Algimantas Kunčius – A. Gudaichi’s son-in-law – was also a faithful chronicler of his life and work, whose accumulated material now helps to reveal and get to know not only the artist’s personality, work, environment, but also the cultural environment of his time of residence.

MO Museum collection/Antanas Gudaitis. Painter

September 2 The exhibition “Compositions” by A. Gudaitis (curator Algė Gudaitytė) opens in the exhibition halls of the Vilnius Academy of Arts “Titanikas” after a break of more than two decades. opening the curtain to the artist’s creative process, everyday life and surrounding environment.

More information: www.gudaitis.lt